eight o'clock
The vintner 's wife was a buxom and jolly dame , and before taking up the money , she gave a pawkie look at the stripling , and as my grandfather and he were going out at the door , she hit the gilly a bilf on the back , saying it was a ne'er - do-weel trade he had ta'en up , and that he wasna blate to wile awa ' her customers , crying after him , `` I redde ye warn your madam that gin she sends you here again , I 'll maybe let his Grace ken that her cauldron needs clouting . '' However , the graceless gilly but laughed at the vintner 's wife , winking as he patted the side of his nose with his fore-finger , which testified that he held her vows of vengeance in very little reverence ; and then he went on , my grandfather following . They walked up the street till they came to the priory yett , when , turning down a wynd to the left , he led my grandfather along between two dykes , till they were come to a house that stood by itself within a fair garden . But instead of going to the door in an honest manner , he bade him stop , and going forward he whistled shrilly , and then flung three stones against a butt , that was standing at the corner of the house on a gauntrees to kep rain water from the spouting image of a stone puddock that vomited what was gathered from the roof in the rones , and soon after an upper casement was opened , and a damsel looked forth ; she however said nothing to the stripling , but she made certain signs which he understood , and then she drew in her head , shutting the casement softly , and he came back to my grandfather , to whom he said it was not commodious at that time for him to be received into the house , but if he would come back in the dark , at eight o'clock , all things would be ready for his reception . To this suggestion my grandfather made no scruple to assent , but promised to be there ; and he bargained with the lad to come for him , giving him at the same time three placks for a largess . He then returned to the vintner 's , where he found the Crail man sitting waiting for him ; and the vintner 's wife , when she saw him so soon back , jeered him , and would fain have been jocose , which he often after thought a woful immorality , considering the dreadful martyrdom of a godly man that had been done that day in the town ; but at the time he was not so over strait-laced as to take offence at what she said ; indeed , as he used to say , sins were not so heinous in those papistical days as they afterwards became , when men lost faith in penance , and found out the perils of purchased pardons . My grandfather having , as I have told , a compassion for the silly affection wherewith the honest man of Crail still regarded his wanton wife , told him the circumstantials of his adventure with the stripling ; without , however , letting wot he had discovered that the invitation was from her ; the which was the case , for the damsel who looked out at the window was no other than the giglet he had seen in her lodging when he went thither with Sir David Hamilton , and he proposed to the disconsolate husband that he should be his friend in the adventure ; meaning thereby to convince the unhappy man , by the evidence of his own eyes and ears , that her concubinage with the Antichrist was a blessed riddance to him and his family .