From him I got many a trick of fence that served my turn later.
But now the evil time came when my dear mother sickened and died, leaving to me her memory and her great chain of gold.

A bitter sorrow is her death to me still; but anon my father took to him another wife of the Bethunes of Blebo.

I blame myself, rather than this lady, that we dwelt not happily in the same house.

My father therefore, still minded to make me a churchman, sent me to Robert of Montrose's new college that stands in the South Street of St.Andrews, a city not far from our house of Pitcullo.

But there, like a wayward boy, I took more pleasure in the battles of the "nations"-- as of Fife against Galloway and the Lennox; or in games of catch-pull, football, wrestling, hurling the bar, archery, and golf--than in divine learning--as of logic, and Aristotle his analytics.
Yet I loved to be in the scriptorium of the Abbey, and to see the good Father Peter limning the blessed saints in blue, and red, and gold, of which art he taught me a little.