None could suspect her of
meddling with affairs of State, or of tampering with the prisoners of
his gracious Majesty. Thus Grisell Home was able successfully to carry a
letter of advice and information, and to bring back to her father in the
Merse tidings of a blameless martyr.
With his father in prison that day was Baillie's son, George, a boy one
year older than Grisell. He had been, as were many of the well-born lads
of his time, at his studies in Holland, reading law, when his father was
put in prison, but hastened home on hearing the news. Boys wore swords,
and not Eton jackets, in George Baillie's day. He had, as his daughter
afterwards wrote of him, "a rough, manly countenance"; and from that day
until the day of her death that face, which she knew first as a boy's,
was more beautiful to Grisell Home than any other face on earth. Several
times afterwards was Grisell sent as bearer of important letters from
her father to him whose son, in days still long to come, was to be her
husband, and never once was the douce little messenger suspected.
Not many months later her own father was a prisoner in Dumbarton Castle,
and during the fifteen months in which he lay there, Grisell was still
the messenger, not only to him, but to his friends in various parts.
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