In fact, this was a point on which he would have found it difficult

to make up his mind, had there been any necessity for it. As there was

none, he drank a few cups of claret, and sang (to himself) a strophe

or two of the canzonettes of the divine Astrophel. But in spite both of

wine and of Sir Philip Sidney, the connexion in which he now stood,

and that which he was in future to hold, with the lovely Molinara, or

Mysinda, as he had been pleased to denominate Mysie Happer, recurred

to his mind. The fashion of the times (as we have already noticed)

fortunately coincided with his own natural generosity of disposition,

which indeed amounted almost to extravagance, in prohibiting, as

a deadly sin, alike against gallantry, chivalry, and morality, his

rewarding the good offices he had received from this poor maiden, by

abusing any of the advantages which her confidence in his honour had

afforded. To do Sir Piercie justice, it was an idea which never entered

into his head; and he would probably have dealt the most scientific

_imbroccata, stoccata_, or _punto reverso_, which the school of Vincent

Saviola had taught him, to any man who had dared to suggest to him such

selfish and ungrateful meanness. On the other hand, he was a man, and

foresaw various circumstances which might render their journey together

in this intimate fashion a scandal and a snare. Moreover, he was a

coxcomb and a courtier, and felt there was something ridiculous in

travelling the land with a miller's daughter behind his saddle, giving

rise to suspicions not very creditable to either, and to ludicrous

constructions, so far as he himself was concerned.

“I would,” he said half aloud, “that if such might be done without harm

or discredit to the too-ambitious, yet too-well-distinguishing Molinara,

she and I were fairly severed, and bound on our different courses; even

as we see the goodly vessel bound for the distant seas hoist sails and

bear away into the deep, while the humble fly-boat carries to shore

those friends, who, with wounded hearts and watery eyes, have committed

to their higher destinies the more daring adventurers by whom the fair

frigate is manned.”

He had scarce uttered the wish when it was gratified; for the host

entered to say that his worshipful knighthood's horse was ready to

be brought forth as he had desired; and on his inquiry for “the--the

damsel--that is--the young woman--”

“Mysie Happer,” said the landlord, “has returned to her father's; but

she bade me say, you could not miss the road for Edinburgh, in respect

it was neither far way nor foul gate.”

It is seldom we are exactly blessed with the precise fulfilment of our

wishes at the moment when we utter them; perhaps, because Heaven wisely

withholds what, if granted, would be often received with ingratitude.

So at least it chanced in the present instance; for when mine host said

that Mysie was returned homeward, the knight was tempted to reply, with

an ejaculation of surprise and vexation, and a hasty demand, whither and

when she had departed? The first emotions his prudence suppressed, the

second found utterance.

“Where is she gane?” said the host, gazing on him, and repeating his

question--“She is gane hame to her father's, it is like--and she gaed

just when she gave orders about your worship's horse, and saw it well

fed, (she might have trusted me, but millers and millers' kin think a'

body as thief-like as themselves,) an' she's three miles on the gate by

this time.”

“Is she gone then?” muttered Sir Piercie, making two or three hasty

strides through the narrow apartment--“Is she gone?--Well, then, let

her go. She could have had but disgrace by abiding by me, and I little

credit by her society. That I should have thought there was such

difficulty in shaking her off! I warrant she is by this time laughing

with some clown she has encountered; and my rich chain will prove a good

dowry.--And ought it not to prove so? and has she not deserved it, were

it ten times more valuable?--Piercie Shafton! Piercie Shafton! dost thou

grudge thy deliverer the guerdon she hath so dearly won? The selfish air

of this northern land hath infected thee, Piercie Shafton! and blighted

the blossoms of thy generosity, even as it is said to shrivel the

flowers of the mulberry.--Yet I thought,” he added, after a moment's

pause, “that she would not so easily and voluntarily have parted from

me. But it skills not thinking of it.--Cast my reckoning, mine host, and

let your groom lead forth my nag.”

The good host seemed also to have some mental point to discuss, for he

answered not instantly, debating perhaps whether his conscience would

bear a double charge for the same guests. Apparently his conscience

replied in the negative, though not without hesitation, for he at length

replied--“It's daffing to lee; it winna deny that the lawing is clean

paid. Ne'ertheless, if your worshipful knighthood pleases to give aught

for increase of trouble--”

“How!” said the knight; “the reckoning paid? and by whom, I pray you?”

“E'en by Mysie Happer, if truth maun be spoken, as I said before,”

answered the honest landlord, with as many compunctious visitings for

telling the verity as another might have felt for making a lie in the

circumstances--“And out of the moneys supplied for your honour's journey

by the Abbot, as she tauld to me. And laith were I to surcharge any

gentleman that darkens my doors.” He added in the confidence of honesty

which his frank avowal entitled him to entertain, “Nevertheless, as I

said before, if it pleases your knighthood of free good-will to consider

extraordinary trouble--”

The knight cut short his argument, by throwing the landlord a

rose-noble, which probably doubled the value of a Scottish reckoning,

though it would have defrayed but a half one at the Three Cranes or the

Vintry. The bounty so much delighted mine host, that he ran to fill the

stirrup-cup (for which no charge was ever made) from a butt yet charier

than that which he had pierced for the former stoup. The knight paced

slowly to horse, partook of his courtesy, and thanked him with the stiff

condescension of the court of Elizabeth; then mounted and followed the

northern path, which was pointed out as the nearest to Edinburgh, and

which, though very unlike a modern highway, bore yet so distinct

a resemblance to a public and frequented road as not to be easily

mistaken.

“I shall not need her guidance it seems,” said he to himself, as he

rode slowly onward; “and I suppose that was one reason of her abrupt

departure, so different from what one might have expected.--Well, I am

well rid of her. Do we not pray to be liberated from temptation? Yet

that she should have erred so much in estimation of her own situation

and mine, as to think of defraying the reckoning! I would I saw her once

more, but to explain to her the solecism of which her inexperience hath

rendered her guilty. And I fear,” he added, as he emerged from some

straggling trees, and looked out upon a wild moorish country, composed

of a succession of swelling lumpish hills, “I fear I shall soon want the

aid of this Ariadne, who might afford me a clew through the recesses of

yonder mountainous labyrinth.”

As the Knight thus communed with himself, his attention was caught by

the sound of a horse's footsteps; and a lad, mounted on a little gray

Scottish nag, about fourteen hands high, coming along a path which

led from behind the trees, joined him on the high-road, if it could be

termed such. The dress of the lad was completely in village fashion, yet

neat and handsome in appearance. He had a jerkin of gray cloth slashed

and trimmed, with black hose of the same, with deer-skin rullions or

sandals, and handsome silver spurs. A cloak of a dark mulberry colour

was closely drawn round the upper part of his person, and the cape in

part muffled his face, which was also obscured by his bonnet of black

velvet cloth, and its little plume of feathers.

Sir Piercie Shafton, fond of society, desirous also to have a guide,

and, moreover, prepossessed in favour of so handsome a youth, failed not

to ask him whence he came, and whither he was going. The youth looked

another way, as he answered, that he was going to Edinburgh, “to seek

service in some nobleman's family.”

“I fear me you have run away from your last master,” said Sir Piercie,

“since you dare not look me in the face while you answer my question.”

“Indeed, sir, I have not,” answered the lad, bashfully, while, as if

with reluctance, he turned round his face, and instantly withdrew it. It

was a glance, but the discovery was complete. There was no mistaking

the dark full eye, the cheek in which much embarrassment could not

altogether disguise an expression of comic humour, and the whole figure

at once betrayed, under her metamorphosis, the Maid of the Mill. The

recognition was joyful, and Sir Piercie Shafton was too much pleased to

have regained his companion to remember the very good reasons which had

consoled him for losing her.

To his questions respecting her dress, she answered that she had

obtained it in the Kirktown from a friend; it was the holiday suit of a

son of hers, who had taken the field with his liege-lord, the baron of

the land. She had borrowed the suit under pretence she meant to play

in some mumming or rural masquerade. She had left, she said, her own

apparel in exchange, which was better worth ten crowns than this was

worth four.

“And the nag, my ingenious Molinara,” said Sir Piercie, “whence comes

the nag?”

“I borrowed him from our host at the Gled's-Nest,” she replied; and

added, half stifling a laugh, “he has sent to get, instead of it, our

Ball, which I left in the Tasker's Park at Cripplecross. He will be

lucky if he find it there.”

“But then the poor man will lose his horse, most argute Mysinda,” said

Sir Piercie Shafton, whose English notions of property were a little

startled at a mode of acquisition more congenial to the ideas of a

miller's daughter (and he a Border miller to boot) than with those of an

English person of quality.

“And if he does lose his horse,” said Mysie, laughing, “surely he is not

the first man on the marches who has had such a mischance. But he will

be no loser, for I warrant he will stop the value out of moneys which he

has owed my father this many a day.”

“But then your father will be the loser,” objected yet again the

pertinacious uprightness of Sir Piercie Shafton.

“What signifies it now to talk of my father?” said the damsel,

pettishly; then instantly changing to a tone of deep feeling, she added,

“my father has this day lost that which will make him hold light the

loss of all the gear he has left.”

Struck with the accents of remorseful sorrow in which his companion

uttered these few words, the English knight felt himself bound both in

honour and conscience to expostulate with her as strongly as he could,

on the risk of the step which she had now taken, and on the propriety of

her returning to her father's house. The matter of his discourse, though

adorned with many unnecessary flourishes, was honourable both to his

head and heart.

The Maid of the Mill listened to his flowing periods with her head sunk

on her bosom as she rode, like one in deep thought or deeper sorrow.

When he had finished, she raised up her countenance, looked full on

the knight, and replied with great firmness--“If you are weary of my

company, Sir Piercie Shafton, you have but to say so, and the Miller's

daughter will be no farther cumber to you. And do not think I will be a

burden to you, if we travel together to Edinburgh; I have wit enough and

pride enough to be a willing burden to no man. But if you reject not my

company at present, and fear not it will be burdensome to you hereafter,

speak no more to me of returning back. All that you can say to me I have

said to myself; and that I am now here, is a sign that I have said it to

no purpose. Let this subject, therefore, be forever ended betwixt us.

I have already, in some small fashion, been useful to you, and the time

may come I may be more so; for this is not your land of England, where

men say justice is done with little fear or favour to great and to

small; but it is a land where men do by the strong hand, and defend by

the ready wit, and I know better than you the perils you are exposed

to.”

Sir Piercie Shafton was somewhat mortified to find that the damsel

conceived her presence useful to him as a protectress as well as guide,

and said something of seeking protection of nought save his own arm and

his good sword. Mysie answered very quietly, that she nothing doubted

his bravery; but it was that very quality of bravery which was most

likely to involve him in danger. Sir Piercie Shafton, whose head never

kept very long in any continued train of thinking, acquiesced without

much reply, resolving in his own mind that the maiden only used this

apology to disguise her real motive, of affection to his person.

The romance of the situation flattered his vanity and elevated his

imagination, as placing him in the situation of one of those romantic

heroes of whom he had read the histories, where similar transformations

made a distinguished figure.

He took many a sidelong glance at his page, whose habits of country

sport and country exercise had rendered her quite adequate to sustain

the character she had assumed. She managed the little nag with

dexterity, and even with grace; nor did any thing appear that could

have betrayed her disguise, except when a bashful consciousness of her

companion's eye being fixed on her, gave her an appearance of temporary

embarrassment, which greatly added to her beauty.

The couple rode forward as in the morning, pleased with themselves and

with each other, until they arrived at the village where they were to

repose for the night, and where all the inhabitants of the little inn,

both male and female, joined in extolling the good grace and handsome

countenance of the English knight, and the uncommon beauty of his

youthful attendant.

It was here that Mysie Happer first made Sir Piercie Shafton sensible

of the reserved manner in which she proposed to live with him. She

announced him as her master, and, waiting upon him with the reverent

demeanour of an actual domestic, permitted not the least approach to

familiarity, not even such as the knight might with the utmost innocence

have ventured upon. For example, Sir Piercie, who, as we know, was a

great connoisseur in dress, was detailing to her the advantageous change

which he proposed to make in her attire as soon as they should reach

Edinburgh, by arraying her in his own colours of pink and carnation.

Mysie Happer listened with great complacency to the unction with which

he dilated upon welts, laces, slashes, and trimmings, until, carried

away by the enthusiasm with which he was asserting the superiority of

the falling band over the Spanish ruff, he approached his hand, in

the way of illustration, towards the collar of his page's doublet. She

instantly stepped back and gravely reminded him that she was alone and

under his protection.

“You cannot but remember the cause which has brought me here,” she

continued; “make the least approach to any familiarity which you would

not offer to a princess surrounded by her court, and you have seen the

last of the Miller's daughter--She will vanish as the chaff disappears

from the shieling-hill [Footnote: The place where corn was winnowed,

while that operation was performed by the hand, was called in Scotland

the Shieling-hill.] when the west wind blows.”

“I do protest, fair Molinara,” said Sir Piercie Shafton--but the fair

Molinara had disappeared before his protest could be uttered. “A most

singular wench,” said he to himself; “and by this hand, as discreet

as she is fair-featured--Certes, shame it were to offer her scathe

or dishonour! She makes similes too, though somewhat savouring of her

condition. Had she but read Euphues, and forgotten that accursed mill

and shieling-hill, it is my thought that her converse would be broidered

with as many and as choice pearls of compliment, as that of the most

rhetorical lady in the court of Feliciana. I trust she means to return

to bear me company.”

But that was no part of Mysie's prudential scheme. It was then drawing

to dusk, and he saw her not again until the next morning, when the

horses were brought to the door that they might prosecute their journey.

But our story here necessarily leaves the English knight and his page,

to return to the Tower of Glendearg.

Chapter the Thirtieth.

You call it an ill angel it may be so,

But sure I am, among the ranks which fell,

'Tis the first fiend e'er counsell'd man to rise,

And win the bliss the sprite himself had forfeited.

OLD PLAY.

We must resume our narrative at the period when Mary Avenel was

conveyed to the apartment which had been formerly occupied by the two

Glendinnings, and when her faithful attendant, Tibbie, had exhausted

herself in useless attempts to compose and to comfort her. Father

Eustace also dealt forth with well-meant kindness those apophthegms and

dogmata of consolation, which friendship almost always offers to grief,

though they are uniformly offered in vain. She was at length left to

indulge in the desolation of her own sorrowful feelings. She felt as

those who, loving for the first time, have lost what they loved, before

time and repeated calamity have taught them that every loss is to a

certain extent reparable or endurable.

Such grief may be conceived better than it can be described, as is well

known to those who have experienced it. But Mary Avenel had been taught

by the peculiarity of her situation, to regard herself as the Child of

Destiny; and the melancholy and reflecting turn of her disposition

gave to her sorrows a depth and breadth peculiar to her character. The

grave--and it was a bloody grave--had closed, as she believed, over the

youth to whom she was secretly, but most warmly attached; the force and

ardour of Halbert's character bearing a singular correspondence to the

energy of which her own was capable. Her sorrow did not exhaust

itself in sighs and tears, but when the first shock had passed away,

concentrated itself with deep and steady meditation, to collect and

calculate, like a bankrupt debtor, the full amount of her loss. It

seemed as if all that connected her with earth, had vanished with this

broken tie. She had never dared to anticipate the probability of an

ultimate union with Halbert, yet now his supposed fall seemed that of

the only tree which was to shelter her from the storm. She respected

the more gentle character, and more peaceful attainments, of the younger

Glendinning; but it had not escaped her (what never indeed escaped

woman in such circumstances) that he was disposed to place himself in

competition with what she, the daughter of a proud and warlike race,

deemed the more manly qualities of his elder brother; and there is no

time when a woman does so little justice to the character of a surviving

lover, as when comparing him with the preferred rival of whom she has

been recently deprived.

The motherly, but coarse kindness of Dame Glendinning, and the doating

fondness of her old domestic, seemed now the only kind feeling of which

she formed the object; and she could not but reflect how little these

were to be compared with the devoted attachment of a high-souled youth,

whom the least glance of her eye could command, as the high-mettled

steed is governed by the bridle of the rider. It was when plunged among

these desolating reflections, that Mary Avenel felt the void of mind,

arising from the narrow and bigoted ignorance in which Rome then

educated the children of her church. Their whole religion was a ritual,

and their prayers were the formal iteration of unknown words, which, in

the hour of affliction, could yield but little consolation to those who

from habit resorted to them. Unused to the practice of mental devotion,

and of personal approach to the Divine Presence by prayer, she could not

help exclaiming in her distress, “There is no aid for me on earth, and I

know not how to ask it from Heaven!”

As she spoke thus in an agony of sorrow, she cast her eyes into the

apartment, and saw the mysterious Spirit, which waited upon the fortunes

of her house, standing in the moonlight in the midst of the room. The

same form, as the reader knows, had more than once offered itself to

her sight; and either her native boldness of mind, or some peculiarity

attached to her from her birth, made her now look upon it without

shrinking. But the White Lady of Avenel was now more distinctly visible,

and more closely present, than she had ever before seemed to be, and

Mary was appalled by her presence. She would, however, have spoken; but

there ran a tradition, that though others who had seen the White Lady

had asked questions and received answers, yet those of the house of

Avenel who had ventured to speak to her, had never long survived the

colloquy. The figure, besides, as sitting up in her bed, Mary Avenel

gazed on it intently, seemed by its gestures to caution her to keep

silence, and at the same time to bespeak attention.

The White Lady then seemed to press one of the planks of the floor with

her foot, while, in her usual low, melancholy, and musical chant, she

repeated the following verses:

“Maiden, whose sorrows wail the Living Dead,

Whose eyes shall commune with the Dead Alive,

Maiden, attend! Beneath my foot lies hid

The Word, the Law, the Path, which thou dost strive

To find and canst not find.--Could spirits shed

Tears for their lot, it were my lot to weep,

Showing the road which I shall never tread,

Though my foot points it.--Sleep, eternal sleep,

Dark, long, and cold forgetfulness my lot!--

But do not thou at human ills repine,

Secure there lies full guerdon in this spot

For all the woes that wait frail Adam's line--

Stoop, then, and make it yours--I may not make it mine!”

The phantom stooped towards the floor as she concluded, as if with the

intention of laying her hand on the board on which she stood. But

ere she had completed that gesture, her form became indistinct, was

presently only like the shade of a fleecy cloud, which passed betwixt

earth and the moon, and was soon altogether invisible.

A strong impression of fear, the first which she had experienced in her

life to any agitating extent, seized upon the mind of Mary Avenel, and

for a minute she felt a disposition to faint. She repelled it, however,

mustered her courage, and addressed herself to saints and angels, as

her church recommended. Broken slumbers at length stole on her exhausted

mind and frame, and she slept until the dawn was about to rise, when

she was awakened by the cry of “Treason! treason! follow, follow!” which

arose in the tower, when it was found that Piercie Shafton had made his

escape.

Apprehensive of some new misfortune, Mary Avenel hastily arranged the

dress which she had not laid aside, and, venturing to quit her chamber,

learned from Tibb, who, with her gray hairs dishevelled like those of

a sibyl, was flying from room to room, that the bloody Southron villain

had made his escape, and that Halbert Glendinning, poor bairn,

would sleep unrevenged and unquiet in his bloody grave. In the lower

apartments, the young men were roaring like thunder, and venting

in oaths and exclamations against the fugitives the rage which they

experienced in finding themselves locked up within the tower, and

debarred from their vindictive pursuit by the wily precautions of Mysie

Happer. The authoritative voice of the Sub-Prior commanding silence was

next heard; upon which Mary Avenel, whose tone of feeling did not lead

her to enter into counsel or society with the rest of the party, again

retired to her solitary chamber.

The rest of the family held counsel in the spence, Edward almost beside

himself with rage, and the Sub-Prior in no small degree offended at the

effrontery of Mysie Happer in attempting such a scheme, as well as at

the mingled boldness and dexterity with which it had been executed. But

neither surprise nor anger availed aught. The windows, well secured

with iron bars for keeping assailants out, proved now as effectual for

detaining the inhabitants within. The battlements were open, indeed; but

without ladder or ropes to act as a substitute for wings, there was no

possibility of descending from them. They easily succeeded in alarming

the inhabitants of the cottages beyond the precincts of the court; but

the men had been called in to strengthen the guard for the night, and

only women and children remained who could contribute nothing in the

emergency, except their useless exclamations of surprise, and there were

no neighbours for miles around. Dame Elspeth, however, though drowned in

tears, was not so unmindful of external affairs, but that she could find

voice enough to tell the women and children without, to “leave their

skirling, and look after the cows that she couldna get minded, what

wi' the awfu' distraction of her mind, what wi' that fause slut having

locked them up in their ain tower as fast as if they had been in the

Jeddart tolbooth.”

Meanwhile, the men finding other modes of exit impossible, unanimously

concluded to force the doors with such tools as the house afforded

for the purpose. These were not very proper for the occasion, and

the strength of the doors was great. The interior one, formed of oak,

occupied them for three mortal hours, and there was little prospect of

the iron door being forced in double the time.

While they were engaged in this ungrateful toil, Mary Avenel had

with much less labour acquired exact knowledge of what the Spirit had

intimated in her mystic rhyme. On examining the spot which the phantom

had indicated by her gestures, it was not difficult to discover that a

board had been loosened, which might be raised at pleasure. On removing

this piece of plank, Mary Avenel was astonished to find the Black Book,

well remembered by her as her mother's favourite study, of which she

immediately took possession, with as much joy as her present situation

rendered her capable of feeling.

Ignorant in a great measure of its contents, Mary Avenel had been

taught from her infancy to hold this volume in sacred veneration. It

is probable that the deceased Lady of Walter Avenel only postponed

initiating her daughter into the mysteries of the Divine Word, until she

should be better able to comprehend both the lessons which it taught,

and the risk at which, in those times, they were studied. Death

interposed, and removed her before the times became favourable to the

reformers, and before her daughter was so far advanced in age as to

be fit to receive religious instruction of this deep import. But the

affectionate mother had made preparations for the earthly work which she

had most at heart. There were slips of paper inserted in the volume, in

which, by an appeal to, and a comparison of, various passages in holy

writ, the errors and human inventions with which the Church of Rome had

defaced the simple edifice of Christianity, as erected by its divine

architect, were pointed out. These controversial topics were treated

with a spirit of calmness and Christian charity, which might have been

an example to the theologians of the period; but they were clearly,

fairly, and plainly argued, and supported by the necessary proofs and

references. Other papers there were which had no reference whatever to

polemics, but were the simple effusions of a devout mind communing with

itself. Among these was one frequently used, as it seemed from the

state of the manuscript, on which the mother of Mary had transcribed and

placed together those affecting texts to which the heart has recourse,

in affliction, and which assures us at once of the sympathy and

protection afforded to the children of the promise. In Mary Avenel's

state of mind, these attracted her above all the other lessons, which,

coming from a hand so dear, had reached her at a time so critical, and

in a manner so touching. She read the affecting promise, “I will never

leave thee nor forsake thee,” and the consoling exhortation, “Call upon

me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” She read them, and

her heart acquiesced in the conclusion. Surely this is the word of God!

There are those to whom a sense of religion has come in storm and

tempest; there are those whom it has summoned amid scenes of revelry

and idle vanity; there are those, too, who have heard its “still small

voice” amid rural leisure and placid contentment. But perhaps the

knowledge which causeth not to err, is most frequently impressed upon

the mind during seasons of affliction; and tears are the softened

showers which cause the seed of Heaven to spring and take root in the

human breast. At least it was thus with Mary Avenel. She was insensible

to the discordant noise which rang below, the clang of bars and the

jarring symphony of the levers which they used to force them, the

measured shouts of the labouring inmates as they combined their strength

for each heave, and gave time with their voices to the exertion of their

arms, and their deeply muttered vows of revenge on the fugitives who had

bequeathed them at their departure a task so toilsome and difficult. Not

all this din, combined in hideous concert, and expressive of aught but

peace, love, and forgiveness, could divert Mary Avenel from the new

course of study on which she had so singularly entered. “The serenity

of Heaven,” she said, “is above me; the sounds which are around are but

those of earth and earthly passion.”

Meanwhile the noon was passed, and little impression was made on the

iron grate, when they who laboured at it received a sudden reinforcement

by the unexpected arrival of Christie of the Clinthill. He came at the

head of a small party, consisting of four horsemen, who bore in their

caps the sprig of holly, which was the badge of Avenel.

“What, ho!--my masters,” he said, “I bring you a prisoner.”

“You had better have brought us liberty,” said Dan of the Howlet-hirst.

Christie looked at the state of affairs with great surprise. “An I were

to be hanged for it,” he said, “as I may for as little a matter, I could

not forbear laughing at seeing men peeping through their own bars like

so many rats in a rat-trap, and he with the beard behind, like the

oldest rat in the cellar.”

“Hush, thou unmannered knave,” said Edward, “it is the Sub-Prior; and

this is neither time, place, nor company, for your ruffian jests.”

“What, ho! is my young master malapert?” said Christie; “why, man, were

he my own carnal father, instead of being father to half the world,

I would have my laugh out. And now it is over, I must assist you, I

reckon, for you are setting very greenly about this gear--put the pinch

nearer the staple, man, and hand me an iron crow through the grate, for

that's the fowl to fly away with a wicket on its shoulders. I have broke

into as many grates as you have teeth in your young head--ay, and broke

out of them too, as the captain of the Castle of Lochmaben knows full

well.”

Christie did not boast more skill than he really possessed; for,

applying their combined strength, under the direction of that

experienced engineer, bolt and staple gave way before them, and in less

than half an hour, the grate, which had so long repelled their force,

stood open before them.

“And now,” said Edward, “to horse, my mates, and pursue the villain

Shafton!”

“Halt, there,” said Christie of the Clinthill; “pursue your guest, my

master's friend and my own?--there go two words to that bargain. What

the foul fiend would you pursue him for?”

“Let me pass,” said Edward, vehemently, “I will be staid by no man--the

villain has murdered my brother!”

“What says he?” said Christie, turning to the others; “murdered? who is

murdered, and by whom?”

“The Englishman, Sir Piercie Shafton,” said Dan of the Howlet-hirst,

“has murdered young Halbert Glendinning yesterday morning, and we have

all risen to the fray.”

“It is a bedlam business, I think,” said Christie. “First I find you all

locked up in your own tower, and next I am come to prevent you revenging

a murder that was never committed!”

“I tell you,” said Edward, “that my brother was slain and buried

yesterday morning by this false Englishman.”

“And I tell you,” answered Christie, “that I saw him alive and well last

night. I would I knew his trick of getting out of the grave; most men

find it more hard to break through a green sod than a grated door.”

Every body now paused, and looked on Christie in astonishment, until the

Sub-Prior, who had hitherto avoided communication with him, came up and

required earnestly to know, whether he meant really to maintain that

Halbert Glendinning lived.

“Father,” he said, with, more respect than he usually showed to any

one save his master, “I confess I may sometimes jest with those of your

coat, but not with you; because, as you may partly recollect, I owe you

a life. It is certain as the sun is in heaven, that Halbert Glendinning

supped at the house of my master the Baron of Avenel last night, and

that he came thither in company with an old man, of whom more anon.”

“And where is he now?”

“The devil only can answer that question,” replied Christie, “for the

devil has possessed the whole family, I think. He took fright, the

foolish lad, at something or other which our Baron did in his moody

humour, and so he jumped into the lake and swam ashore like a wild-duck.

Robin of Redcastle spoiled a good gelding in chasing him this morning.”

“And why did he chase the youth?” said the Sub-Prior; “what harm had he

done?”

“None that I know of,” said Christie; “but such was the Baron's order,

being in his mood, and all the world having gone mad, as I have said

before.”

“Whither away so fast, Edward?” said the monk.

“To Corri-nan-shian, Father,” answered the youth.--“Martin and Dan, take

pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if you be men!”

“Right,” said the monk, “and fail not to give us instant notice what you

find.”

“If you find aught there like Halbert Glendinning,” said Christie,

hallooing after Edward, “I will be bound to eat him unsalted.--'T is

a sight to see how that fellow takes the bent!--It is in the time of

action men see what lads are made of. Halbert was aye skipping up and

down like a roo, and his brother used to sit in the chimney nook with

his book and sic-like trash--But the lad was like a loaded hackbut,

which will stand in the corner as quiet as an old crutch until ye draw

the trigger, and then there is nothing but flash and smoke.--But here

comes my prisoner; and, setting other matters aside, I must pray a word

with you, Sir Sub-Prior, respecting him. I came on before to treat about

him, but I was interrupted with this fasherie.”

As he spoke, two more of Avenel's troopers rode into the court-yard,

leading betwixt them a horse, on which, with his hands bound to his

side, sate the reformed preacher, Henry Warden.

Chapter the Thirty-First.

At school I knew him--a sharp-witted youth,

Grave, thoughtful, and reserved among his mates,

Turning the hours of sport and food to labour,

Starving his body to inform his mind.

OLD PLAY.

The Sub-Prior, at the Borderer's request, had not failed to return to

the tower, into which he was followed by Christie of the Clinthill, who,

shutting the door of the apartment, drew near, and began his discourse

with great confidence and familiarity.

“My master,” he said, “sends me with his commendations to you, Sir

Sub-Prior, above all the community of Saint Mary's, and more specially

than even to the Abbot himself; for though he be termed my lord, and so

forth, all the world knows that you are the tongue of the trump.”

“If you have aught to say to me concerning the community,” said the

Sub-Prior, “it were well you proceeded in it without farther delay. Time

presses, and the fate of young Glendinnning dwells on my mind.”

“I will be caution for him, body for body,” said Christie. “I do protest

to you, as sure as I am a living man, so surely is he one.”

“Should I not tell his unhappy mother the joyful tidings?” said Father

Eustace,--“and yet better wait till they return from searching the

grave. Well, Sir Jackman, your message to me from your master?”

“My lord and master,” said Christie, “hath good reason to believe that,

from the information of certain back friends, whom he will reward at

more leisure, your reverend community hath been led to deem him ill

attached to Holy Church, allied with heretics and those who favour

heresy, and a hungerer after the spoils of your Abbey.”

“Be brief, good henchman,” said the Sub-Prior, “for the devil is ever

most to be feared when he preacheth.”

“Briefly, then--my master desires your friendship; and to excuse himself

from the maligner's calumnies, he sends to your Abbot that Henry Warden,

whose sermons have turned the world upside down, to be dealt with as

Holy Church directs, and as the Abbot's pleasure may determine.”

The Sub-Prior's eyes sparkled at the intelligence; for it had been

accounted a matter of great importance that this man should be arrested,

possessed, as he was known to be, of so much zeal and popularity, that

scarcely the preaching of Knox himself had been more awakening to the

people, and more formidable to the Church of Rome.

In fact, that ancient system, which so well accommodated its doctrines

to the wants and wishes of a barbarous age, had, since the art of

printing, and the gradual diffusion of knowledge, lain floating like

some huge Leviathan, into which ten thousand reforming fishers were

darting their harpoons. The Roman Church of Scotland, in particular,

was at her last gasp, actually blowing blood and water, yet still with

unremitted, though animal exertions, maintaining the conflict with the

assailants, who on every side were plunging their weapons into her bulky

body. In many large towns, the monasteries had been suppressed by

the fury of the populace; in other places, their possessions had been

usurped by the power of the reformed nobles; but still the hierarchy

made a part of the common law of the realm, and might claim both its

property and its privileges wherever it had the means of asserting them.

The community of Saint Mary's of Kennaquhair was considered as being

particularly in this situation. They had retained, undiminished,

their territorial power and influence; and the great barons in the

neighbourhood, partly from their attachment to the party in the state

who still upheld the old system of religion, partly because each grudged

the share of the prey which the others must necessarily claim, had

as yet abstained from despoiling the Halidome. The Community was also

understood to be protected by the powerful Earls of Northumberland and

Westmoreland, whose zealous attachment to the Catholic faith caused at a

later period the great rebellion of the tenth of Elizabeth.

Thus happily placed, it was supposed by the friends of the decaying

cause of the Roman Catholic faith, that some determined example of

courage and resolution, exercised where the franchises of the church

were yet entire, and her jurisdiction undisputed, might awe the progress

of the new opinions into activity; and, protected by the laws which

still existed, and by the favour of the sovereign, might be the means of

securing the territory which Rome yet preserved in Scotland, and perhaps

of recovering that which she had lost.

The matter had been considered more than once by the northern Catholics

of Scotland, and they had held communication with those of the south.

Father Eustace, devoted by his public and private vows, had caught the

flame, and had eagerly advised that they should execute the doom of

heresy on the first reformed preacher, or, according to his sense, on

the first heretic of eminence, who should venture within the precincts

of the Halidome. A heart, naturally kind and noble, was, in this

instance, as it has been in many more, deceived by its own generosity.

Father Eustace would have been a bad administrator of the inquisitorial

power of Spain, where that power was omnipotent, and where judgment was

exercised without danger to those who inflicted it. In such a situation

his rigour might have relented in favour of the criminal, whom it was

at his pleasure to crush or to place at freedom. But in Scotland, during

this crisis, the case was entirely different. The question was, whether

one of the spirituality dared, at the hazard of his own life, to step

forward to assert and exercise the rights of the church. Was there any

who would venture to wield the thunder in her cause, or must it remain

like that in the hand of a painted Jupiter, the object of derision

instead of terror? The crisis was calculated to awake the soul of

Eustace; for it comprised the question, whether he dared, at all hazards

to himself, to execute with stoical severity a measure which, according

to the general opinion, was to be advantageous to the church, and,

according to ancient law, and to his firm belief, was not only

justifiable but meritorious.

While such resolutions were agitated amongst the Catholics, chance

placed a victim within their grasp. Henry Warden had, with the animation

proper to the enthusiastic reformers of the age, transgressed, in the

vehemence of his zeal, the bounds of the discretional liberty allowed

to his sect so far, that it was thought the Queen's personal dignity

was concerned in bringing him to justice. He fled from Edinburgh,

with recommendations, however, from Lord James Stewart, afterwards the

celebrated Earl of Murray, to some of the Border chieftains of inferior

rank, who were privately conjured to procure him safe passage into

England. One of the principal persons to whom such recommendation was

addressed, was Julian Avenel; for as yet, and for a considerable time

afterwards, the correspondence and interest of Lord James lay rather

with the subordinate leaders than with the chiefs of great power,

and men of distinguished influence upon the Border. Julian Avenel had

intrigued without scruple with both parties--yet bad as he was, he

certainly would not have practised aught against the guest whom Lord

James had recommended to his hospitality, had it not been for what he

termed the preacher's officious inter-meddling in his family affairs.

But when he had determined to make Warden rue the lecture he had read

him, and the scene of public scandal which he had caused in his hall,

Julian resolved, with the constitutional shrewdness of his disposition,

to combine his vengeance with his interest. And therefore, instead of

doing violence on the person of Henry Warden within his own castle, he

determined to deliver him up to the Community of Saint Mary's, and at

once make them the instruments of his own revenge, and found a claim of

personal recompense, either in money, or in a grant of Abbey lands at a

low quit-rent, which last began now to be the established form in which

the temporal nobles plundered the spirituality.

The Sub-Prior, therefore, of Saint Mary's, unexpectedly saw the

steadfast, active, and inflexible enemy of the church delivered into

his hand, and felt himself called upon to make good his promises to the

friends of the Catholic faith, by quenching heresy in the blood of one

of its most zealous professors.

To the honour more of Father Eustace's heart than of his consistency,

the communication that Henry Warden was placed within his power, struck

him with more sorrow than triumph; but his next feelings were those of

exultation. “It is sad,” he said to himself, “to cause human suffering;

it is awful to cause human blood to be spilled; but the judge to

whom the sword of Saint Paul, as well as the keys of Saint Peter, are

confided, must not flinch from his task. Our weapon returns into our

own bosom, if not wielded with a steady and unrelenting hand against the

irreconcilable enemies of the Holy Church. _Pereat iste!_ It is the doom

he has incurred, and were all the heretics in Scotland armed and at his

back, they should not prevent its being pronounced, and, if possible,

enforced.--Bring the heretic before me,” he said, issuing his commands

aloud, and in a tone of authority.

Henry Warden was led in, his hands still bound, but his feet at liberty.

“Clear the apartment,” said the Sub-Prior, “of all but the necessary

guard on the prisoner.”

All retired except Christie of the Clinthill, who, having dismissed the

inferior troopers whom he commanded, unsheathed his sword, and placed

himself beside the door, as if taking upon him the character of

sentinel.

The judge and the accused met face to face, and in that of both was

enthroned the noble confidence of rectitude. The monk was about, at

the utmost risk to himself and his community, to exercise what in his

ignorance he conceived to be his duty. The preacher, actuated by a

better-informed, yet not a more ardent zeal, was prompt to submit to

execution for God's sake, and to seal, were it necessary, his mission

with his blood. Placed at such a distance of time as better enables us

to appreciate the tendency of the principles on which they severally

acted, we cannot doubt to which the palm ought to be awarded. But the

zeal of Father Eustace was as free from passion and personal views as if

it had been exerted in a better cause.

They approached each other, armed each and prepared for intellectual

conflict, and each intently regarding his opponent, as if either hoped

to spy out some defect, some chasm in the armour of his antagonist.--As

they gazed on each other, old recollections began to awake in either

bosom, at the sight of features long unseen and much altered, but not

forgotten. The brow of the Sub-Prior dismissed by degrees its frown of

command, the look of calm yet stern defiance gradually vanished from

that of Warden, and both lost for an instant that of gloomy solemnity.

They had been ancient and intimate friends in youth at a foreign

university, but had been long separated from each other; and the change

of name, which the preacher had adopted from motives of safety, and

the monk from the common custom of the convent, had prevented the

possibility of their hitherto recognizing each other in the opposite

parts which they had been playing in the great polemical and political

drama. But now the Sub-Prior exclaimed, “Henry Wellwood!” and the

preacher replied, “William Allan!”--and, stirred by the old familiar

names, and never-to-be-forgotten recollections of college studies and

college intimacy, their hands were for a moment locked in each other.

“Remove his bonds,” said the Sub-Prior, and assisted Christie in

performing that office with his own hands, although the prisoner

scarcely would consent to be unbound, repeating with emphasis, that he

rejoiced in the cause for which he suffered shame. When his hands

were at liberty, however, he showed his sense of the kindness by again

exchanging a grasp and a look of affection with the Sub-Prior.

The salute was frank and generous on either side, yet it was but the

friendly recognition and greeting which are wont to take place betwixt

adverse champions, who do nothing in hate but all in honour. As each

felt the pressure of the situation in which they stood, he quitted the

grasp of the other's hand, and fell back, confronting each other with

looks more calm and sorrowful than expressive of any other passion. The

Sub-Prior was the first to speak.

“And is this, then, the end of that restless activity of mind, that bold

and indefatigable love of truth that urged investigation to its

utmost limits, and seemed to take heaven itself by storm--is this the

termination of Wellwood's career?--And having known and loved him during

the best years of our youth, do we meet in our old age as judge and

criminal?”

“Not as judge and criminal,” said Henry Warden,--for to avoid confusion

we describe him by his later and best known name--“Not as judge and

criminal do we meet, but as a misguided oppressor and his ready and

devoted victim. I, too, may ask, are these the harvest of the rich hopes

excited by the classical learning, acute logical powers, and varied

knowledge of William Allan, that he should sink to be the solitary

drone of a cell, graced only above the swarm with the high commission of

executing Roman malice on all who oppose Roman imposture?”

“Not to thee,” answered the Sub-Prior, “be assured--not unto thee, nor

unto mortal man, will I render an account of the power with which the

church may have invested me. It was granted but as a deposit for her

welfare--for her welfare it shall at every risk be exercised, without

fear and without favour.”

“I expected no less from your misguided zeal,” answered the preacher;

“and in me have you met one on whom you may fearlessly exercise your

authority, secure that his mind at least will defy your influence, as

the snows of that Mont Blanc which we saw together, shrink not under the

heat of the hottest summer sun.”

“I do believe thee,” said the Sub-Prior, “I do believe that thine is

indeed metal unmalleable by force. Let it yield then to persuasion. Let

us debate these matters of faith, as we once were wont to conduct our

scholastic disputes, when hours, nay, days, glided past in the mutual

exercise of our intellectual powers. It may be thou mayest yet hear the

voice of the shepherd, and return to the universal fold.”

“No, Allan,” replied the prisoner, “this is no vain question, devised by

dreaming scholiasts, on which they may whet their intellectual faculties

until the very metal be wasted away. The errors which I combat are like

those fiends which are only cast out by fasting and prayer. Alas! not

many wise, not many learned are chosen; the cottage and the hamlet shall

in our days bear witness against the schools and their disciples. Thy

very wisdom, which is foolishness, hath made thee, as the Greeks of old,

hold as foolishness that which is the only true wisdom.”

“This,” said the Sub-Prior, sternly, “is the mere cant of ignorant

enthusiasm, which appealeth from learning and from authority, from the

sure guidance of that lamp which God hath afforded us in the Councils

and in the Fathers of the Church, to a rash, self-willed, and arbitrary

interpretation of the Scriptures, wrested according to the private

opinion of each speculating heretic.”

“I disdain to reply to the charge,” replied Warden. “The question at

issue between your Church and mine, is, whether we will be judged by the

Holy Scriptures, or by the devices and decisions of men not less subject

to error than ourselves, and who have defaced our holy religion with

vain devices, reared up idols of stone and wood, in form of those, who,

when they lived, were but sinful creatures, to share the worship due

only to the Creator--established a toll-house betwixt heaven and hell,

that profitable purgatory of which the Pope keeps the keys, like an

iniquitous judge commutes punishment for bribes, and----”

“Silence, blasphemer,” said the Sub-Prior, sternly, “or I will have thy

blatant obloquy stopped with a gag!”

“Ay,” replied Warden, “such is the freedom of the Christian conference

to which Rome's priests so kindly invite us!--the gag--the rack--the

axe--is the _ratio ultima Romae_. But know thou, mine ancient friend,

that the character of thy former companion is not so changed by age, but

that he still dares to endure for the cause of truth all that thy proud

hierarchy shall dare to inflict.”

“Of that,” said the monk, “I nothing doubt--Thou wert ever a lion to

turn against the spear of the hunter, not a stag to be dismayed at the

sound of his bugle.”--He walked through the room in silence. “Wellwood,”

he said at length, “we can no longer be friends. Our faith, our hope,

our anchor on futurity, is no longer the same.”

“Deep is my sorrow that thou speakest truth. May God so judge me,” said

the Reformer, “as I would buy the conversion of a soul like thine with

my dearest heart's blood.”

“To thee, and with better reason, do I return the wish,” replied the

Sub-Prior; “it is such an arm as thine that should defend the bulwarks

of the Church, and it is now directing the battering-ram against them,

and rendering practicable the breach through which all that is greedy,

and all that is base, and all that is mutable and hot-headed in this

innovating age, already hope to advance to destruction and to spoil.

But since such is our fate, that we can no longer fight side by side

as friends, let us at least act as generous enemies. You cannot have

forgotten,

'O gran bonta dei caralieri antiqui!

Erano nemici, eran' de fede diversa'--

Although, perhaps,” he added, stopping short in his quotation, “your new

faith forbids you to reserve a place in your memory, even for what high

poets have recorded of loyal faith and generous sentiment.”

“The faith of Buchanan,” replied the preacher, “the faith of Buchanan

and of Beza, cannot be unfriendly to literature. But the poet you have

quoted affords strains fitter for a dissolute court than for a convent.”

“I might retort on your Theodore Beza,” said the Sub-Prior, smiling;

“but I hate the judgment that, like the flesh-fly, skims over whatever

is sound, to detect and settle upon some spot which is tainted. But to

the purpose. If I conduct thee or send thee a prisoner to St. Mary's,

thou art to-night a tenant of the dungeon, to-morrow a burden to the

gibbet-tree. If I were to let thee go hence at large, I were thereby

wronging the Holy Church, and breaking mine own solemn vow. Other

resolutions may be adopted in the capital, or better times may speedily

ensue. Wilt thou remain a true prisoner upon thy parole, rescue or no

rescue, as is the phrase amongst the warriors of this country? Wilt

thou solemnly promise that thou wilt do so, and at my summons thou wilt

present thyself before the Abbot and Chapter at Saint Mary's, and that

thou wilt not stir from this house above a quarter of a mile in any

direction? Wilt thou, I say, engage me thy word for this? and such is

the sure trust which I repose in thy good faith, that thou shalt remain

here unharmed and unsecured, a prisoner at large, subject only to appear

before our court when called upon.”

The preacher paused--“I am unwilling,” he said, “to fetter my native

liberty by any self-adopted engagement. But I am already in your power,

and you may bind me to my answer. By such promise, to abide within

a certain limit, and to appear when called upon, I renounce not any

liberty which I at present possess, and am free to exercise; but, on the

contrary, being in bonds, and at your mercy, I acquire thereby a liberty

which I at present possess not. I will therefore accept of thy proffer,

as what is courteously offered on thy part, and may be honourably

accepted on mine.”

“Stay yet,” said the Sub-Prior; “one important part of thy engagement is

forgotten--thou art farther to promise, that while thus left at liberty,

thou wilt not preach or teach, directly or indirectly, any of those

pestilent heresies by which so many souls have been in this our day won

over from the kingdom of light to the kingdom of darkness.”

“There we break off our treaty,” said Warden, firmly--“Wo unto me if I

preach not the Gospel!”

The Sub-Prior's countenance became clouded, and he again paced the

apartment, and muttered, “A plague upon the self-willed fool!” then

stopped short in his walk, and proceeded in his argument.--“Why, by

thine own reasoning, Henry, thy refusal here is but peevish obstinacy.

It is in my power to place you where your preaching can reach no human

ear; in promising therefore to abstain from it, you grant nothing which

you have it in your power to refuse.”

“I know not that,” replied Henry Warden; “thou mayest indeed cast me

into a dungeon, but can I foretell that my Master hath not task-work for

me to perform even in that dreary mansion? The chains of saints have,

ere now, been the means of breaking the bonds of Satan. In a prison,

holy Paul found the jailor whom he brought to believe the word of

salvation, he and all his house.”

“Nay,” said the Sub-Prior, in a tone betwixt anger and scorn, “if

you match yourself with the blessed Apostle, it were time we had

done--prepare to endure what thy folly, as well as thy heresy,

deserves.--Bind him, soldier.”

With proud submission to his fate, and regarding the Sub-Prior with

something which almost amounted to a smile of superiority, the preacher

placed his arms so that the bonds could be again fastened round him.

“Spare me not,” he said to Christie; for even that ruffian hesitated to

draw the cord straitly.

The Sub-Prior, meanwhile, looked at him from under his cowl, which he

had drawn over his head, and partly over his face, as if he wished to

shade his own emotions. They were those of a huntsman within point-blank

shot of a noble stag, who is yet too much struck with his majesty of

front and of antler to take aim at him. They were those of a fowler,

who, levelling his gun at a magnificent eagle, is yet reluctant to use

his advantage when he sees the noble sovereign of the birds pruning

himself in proud defiance of whatever may be attempted against him. The

heart of the Sub-Prior (bigoted as he was) relented, and he doubted

if he ought to purchase, by a rigorous discharge of what he deemed his

duty, the remorse he might afterwards feel for the death of one so nobly

independent in thought and character, the friend, besides, of his own

happiest years, during which they had, side by side, striven in the

noble race of knowledge, and indulged their intervals of repose in the

lighter studies of classical and general letters.

The Sub-Prior's hand pressed his half-o'ershadowed cheek, and his eye,

more completely obscured, was bent on the ground, as if to hide the

workings of his relenting nature.

“Were but Edward safe from the infection,” he thought to

himself--“Edward, whose eager and enthusiastic mind presses forward in

the chase of all that hath even the shadow of knowledge, I might trust

this enthusiast with the women, after due caution to them that they

cannot, without guilt, attend to his reveries.”

As the Sub-Prior revolved these thoughts, and delayed the definitive

order which was to determine the fate of the prisoner, a sudden noise

at the entrance of the tower diverted his attention for an instant, and,

his cheek and brow inflamed with all the glow of heat and determination,

Edward Glendinning rushed into the room.

* * * * *

Chapter the Thirty-Second.

Then in my gown of sober gray

Along the mountain path I'll wander,

And wind my solitary way

To the sad shrine that courts me yonder.

There, in the calm monastic shade,

All injuries may be forgiven;

And there for thee, obdurate maid,

My orisons shall rise to heaven.

THE CRUEL LADY OF THE MOUNTAINS.

The first words which Edward uttered were,--“My brother is safe,

reverend father--he is safe, thank God, and lives!--There is not in

Corri-nan-shian a grave, nor a vestige of a grave. The turf around the

fountain has neither been disturbed by pick-axe, spade, nor mattock,

since the deer's-hair first sprang there. He lives as surely as I live!”

The earnestness of the youth--the vivacity with which he looked and

moved--the springy step, outstretched hand, and ardent eye, reminded

Henry Warden of Halbert, so lately his guide. The brothers had indeed

a strong family resemblance, though Halbert was far more athletic and

active in his person, taller and better knit in the limbs, and though

Edward had, on ordinary occasions, a look of more habitual acuteness

and more profound reflection. The preacher was interested as well as the

Sub-Prior.

“Of whom do you speak, my son?” he said, in a tone as unconcerned as if

his own fate had not been at the same instant trembling in the balance,

and as if a dungeon and death did not appear to be his instant doom--“Of

whom, I say, speak you? If of a youth somewhat older than you seem to

be--brown-haired, open-featured, taller and stronger than you appear,

yet having much of the same air and of the same tone of voice--if such a

one is the brother whom you seek, it may be I can tell you news of him.”

“Speak, then, for Heaven's sake,” said Edward--“life or death lies on

thy tongue!”

The Sub-Prior joined eagerly in the same request, and, without waiting

to be urged, the preacher gave so minute an account of the circumstances

under which he met the elder Glendinning, with so exact a description

of his person, that there remained no doubt as to his identity. When he

mentioned that Halbert Glendinning had conducted him to a dell in which

they found the grass bloody, and a grave newly closed, and told how

the youth accused himself of the slaughter of Sir Piercie Shafton, the

Sub-Prior looked on Edward with astonishment.

“Didst thou not say, even now,” he said, “that there was no vestige of a

grave in that spot?”

“No more vestige of the earth having been removed than if the turf had

grown there since the days of Adam,” replied Edward Glendinning. “It is

true,” he added, “that the adjacent grass was trampled and bloody.”

“These are delusions of the Enemy,” said the Sub-Prior, crossing

himself.--“Christian men may no longer doubt of it.”

“But an it be so,” said Warden, “Christian men might better guard

themselves by the sword of prayer than by the idle form of a

cabalistical spell.”

“The badge of our salvation,” said the Sub-Prior, “cannot be so

termed--the sign of the cross disarmeth all evil spirits.”

“Ay,” answered Henry Warden, apt and armed for controversy, “but it

should be borne in the heart, not scored with the fingers in the air.

That very impassive air, through which your hand passes, shall as soon

bear the imprint of your action, as the external action shall avail the

fond bigot who substitutes vain motions of the body, idle genuflections,

and signs of the cross, for the living and heart-born duties of faith

and good works.”

“I pity thee,” said the Sub-Prior, as actively ready for polemics as

himself,--“I pity thee, Henry, and reply not to thee. Thou mayest as

well winnow forth and measure the ocean with a sieve, as mete out the

power of holy words, deeds, and signs, by the erring gauge of thine own

reason.”

“Not by mine own reason would I mete them,” said Warden; “but by His

holy Word, that unfading and unerring lamp of our paths, compared to

which human reason is but as a glimmering and fading taper, and your

boasted tradition only a misleading wildfire. Show me your Scripture

warrant for ascribing virtue to such vain signs and motions!”

“I offered thee a fair field of debate,” said the Sub-Prior, “which thou

didst refuse. I will not at present resume the controversy.”

“Were these my last accents,” said the reformer, “and were they uttered

at the stake, half-choked with smoke, and as the fagots kindled into a

blaze around me, with that last utterance I would testify against the

superstitious devices of Rome.”

The Sub-Prior suppressed with pain the controversial answer which arose

to his lips, and, turning to Edward Glendinning, he said, “there could

be now no doubt that his mother ought presently to be informed that her

son lived.”

“I told you that two hours since,” said Christie of the Clinthill, “an

you would have believed me. But it seems you are more willing to take

the word of an old gray sorner, whose life has been spent in pattering

heresy, than mine, though I never rode a foray in my life without duly

saying my paternoster.”

“Go then,” said Father Eustace to Edward; “let thy sorrowing mother know

that her son is restored to her from the grave, like the child of the

widow of Zarephath; at the intercession,” he added, looking at Henry

Warden, “of the blessed Saint whom I invoked in his behalf.”

“Deceived thyself,” said Warden, instantly, “thou art a deceiver of

others. It was no dead man, no creature of clay, whom the blessed

Tishbite invoked, when, stung by the reproach of the Shunamite woman, he

prayed that her son's soul might come into him again.”

“It was by his intercession, however,” repeated the Sub-Prior; “for

what says the Vulgate? Thus it is written: '_Et exaudivit Dominus vocem

Helie; et reversa est anima pueri intra cum, et revixit_;'--and thinkest

thou the intercession of a glorified saint is more feeble than when he

walks on earth, shrouded in a tabernacle of clay, and seeing but with

the eye of flesh?”

During this controversy Edward Glendinning appeared restless and

impatient, agitated by some internal feeling, but whether of joy, grief,

or expectation, his countenance did not expressly declare. He took now

the unusual freedom to break in upon the discourse of the Sub-Prior,

who, notwithstanding his resolution to the contrary, was obviously

kindling in the spirit of controversy, which Edward diverted by

conjuring his reverence to allow him to speak a few words with him in

private.

“Remove the prisoner,” said the Sub-Prior to Christie; “look to him

carefully that he escape not; but for thy life do him no injury.”

His commands being obeyed, Edward and the monk were left alone, when the

Sub-Prior thus addressed him:

“What hath come over thee, Edward, that thy eye kindles so wildly, and

thy cheek is thus changing from scarlet to pale? Why didst thou break

in so hastily and unadvisedly upon the argument with which I was

prostrating yonder heretic? And wherefore dost thou not tell thy mother

that her son is restored to her by the intercession, as Holy Church well

warrants us to believe, of Blessed Saint Benedict, the patron of our

Order? For if ever my prayers were put forth to him with zeal, it hath

been in behalf of this house, and thine eyes have seen the result--go

tell it to thy mother.”

“I must tell her then,” said Edward, “that if she has regained one son,

another is lost to her.”

“What meanest thou, Edward? what language is this?” said the Sub-Prior.

“Father,” said the youth, kneeling down to him, “my sin and my shame

shall be told thee, and thou shalt witness my penance with thine own

eyes.”

“I comprehend thee not,” said the Sub-Prior. “What canst thou have done

to deserve such self-accusation?--Hast thou too listened,” he added,

knitting his brows, “to the demon of heresy, ever most effectual tempter

of those, who, like yonder unhappy man, are distinguished by their love

of knowledge?”

“I am guiltless in that matter,” answered Glendinning, “nor have

presumed to think otherwise than thou, my kind father, hast taught me,

and than the Church allows.”

“And what is it then, my son,” said the Sub-Prior, kindly, “which thus

afflicts thy conscience? speak it to me, that I may answer thee in the

words of comfort; for the Church's mercy is great to those obedient

children who doubt not her power.”

“My confession will require her mercy,” replied Edward. “My brother

Halbert--so kind, so brave, so gentle, who spoke not, thought not, acted

not, but in love to me, whose hand had aided me in every difficulty,

whose eye watched over me like the eagle's over her nestlings, when they

prove their first flight from the eyry--this brother, so kind, so gently

affectionate--I heard of his sudden, his bloody, his violent death, and

I rejoiced--I heard of his unexpected restoration, and I sorrowed!”

“Edward,” said the father, “thou art beside thyself--what could urge

thee to such odious ingratitude?--In your hurry of spirits you have

mistaken the confused tenor of your feelings--Go, my son, pray and

compose thy mind--we will speak of this another time.”

“No, father, no,” said Edward, vehemently, “now or never!--I will find

the means to tame this rebellious heart of mine, or I will tear it

out of my bosom--Mistake its passions?--No, father, grief can ill be

mistaken for joy--All wept, all shrieked around me--my mother--the

menials--she too, the cause of my crime--all wept--and I--I could

hardly disguise my brutal and insane joy under the appearance of

revenge--Brother, I said, I cannot give thee tears, but I will give thee

blood--Yes, father, as I counted hour after hour, while I kept watch

upon the English prisoner, and said, I am an hour nearer to hope and to

happiness----”

“I understand thee not, Edward,” said the monk, “nor can I conceive in

what way thy brother's supposed murder should have affected thee with

such unnatural joy--Surely the sordid desire to succeed him in his small

possessions----”

“Perish the paltry trash!” said Edward, with the same emotion. “No,

father, it was rivalry--it was jealous rage--it was the love of Mary

Avenel, that rendered me the unnatural wretch I confess myself!”

“Of Mary Avenel!” said the Priest--“of a lady so high above either of

you in name and in rank? How dared Halbert--how dared you, to presume to

lift your eye to her but in honour and respect, as a superior of another

degree from yours?”

“When did love wait for the sanction of heraldry?” replied Edward; “and

in what but a line of dead ancestors was Mary, our mother's guest and

foster-child, different from us, with whom she was brought up?--Enough,

we loved--we both loved her! But the passion of Halbert was requited. He

knew it not, he saw it not--but I was sharper-eyed. I saw that even when

I was more approved, Halbert was more beloved. With me she would sit for

hours at our common task with the cold simplicity and indifference of

a sister, but with Halbert she trusted not herself. She changed colour,

she was fluttered when he approached her; and when he left her, she was

sad, pensive, and solitary. I bore all this--I saw my rival's advancing

progress in her affections--I bore it, father, and yet I hated him

not--I could not hate him!”

“And well for thee that thou didst not,” said the father; “wild and

headstrong as thou art, wouldst thou hate thy brother for partaking in

thine own folly?”

“Father,” replied Edward, “the world esteems thee wise, and holds thy

knowledge of mankind high; but thy question shows that thou hast never

loved. It was by an effort that I saved myself from hating my kind

and affectionate brother, who, all unsuspicious of my rivalry, was

perpetually loading me with kindness. Nay, there were moods of my

mind, in which I could return that kindness for a time with energetic

enthusiasm. Never did I feel this so strongly as on the night which

parted us. But I could not help rejoicing when he was swept from my

path--could not help sorrowing when he was again restored to be a

stumbling-block in my paths.”

“May God be gracious to thee, my son!” said the monk; “this is an awful

state of mind. Even in such evil mood did the first murderer rise up

against his brother, because Abel's was the more acceptable sacrifice.”

“I will wrestle with the demon which has haunted me, father,” replied

the youth, firmly--“I will wrestle with him, and I will subdue him. But

first I must remove from the scenes which are to follow here. I cannot

endure that I should see Mary Avenel's eyes again flash with joy at the

restoration of her lover. It were a sight to make indeed a second Cain

of me! My fierce, turbid, and transitory joy discharged itself in a

thirst to commit homicide, and how can I estimate the frenzy of my

despair?”

“Madman!” said the Sub-Prior, “at what dreadful crime does thy fury

drive?”

“My lot is determined, father,” said Edward, in a resolute tone; “I will

embrace the spiritual state which you have so oft recommended. It is my

purpose to return with you to Saint Mary's, and, with the permission

of the Holy Virgin and of Saint Benedict, to offer my profession to the

Abbot.”

“Not now, my son,” said the Sub-Prior, “not in this distemperature

of mind. The wise and good accept not gifts which are made in heat

of blood, and which may be after repented of; and shall we make

our offerings to wisdom and to goodness itself with less of solemn

resolution and deep devotion of mind, than is necessary to make them

acceptable to our own frail companions in this valley of darkness? This

I say to thee, my son, not as meaning to deter thee from the good path

thou art now inclined to prefer, but that thou mayst make thy vocation

and thine election sure.”

“There are actions, father,” returned Edward, “which brook no delay, and

this is one. It must be done this very _now_; or it may never be done.

Let me go with you; let me not behold the return of Halbert into this

house. Shame, and the sense of the injustice I have already done him,

will join with these dreadful passions which urge me to do him yet

farther wrong. Let me then go with you.”

“With me, my son,” said the Sub-Prior, “thou shalt surely go; but our

rule, as well as reason and good order, require that you should dwell a

space with us as a probationer, or novice, before taking upon thee those

final vows, which, sequestering thee for ever from the world, dedicate

thee to the service of Heaven.”

“And when shall we set forth, father?” said the youth, as eagerly as

if the journey which he was now undertaking led to the pleasures of a

summer holiday.

“Even now, if thou wilt,” said the Sub-Prior, yielding to his

impetuosity--“go, then, and command them to prepare for our

departure.--Yet stay,” he said, as Edward, with all the awakened

enthusiasm of his character, hastened from his presence, “come hither,

my son, and kneel down.”

Edward obeyed, and kneeled down before him. Notwithstanding his slight

figure and thin features, the Sub-Prior could, from the energy of his

tone, and the earnestness of his devotional manner, impress his pupils

and his penitents with no ordinary feelings of personal reverence. His

heart always was, as well as seemed to be, in the duty which he was

immediately performing; and the spiritual guide who thus shows a deep

conviction of the importance of his office, seldom fails to impress a

similar feeling upon his hearers. Upon such occasions as the present,

his puny body seemed to assume more majestic stature--his spare and

emaciated countenance bore a bolder, loftier, and more commanding

port--his voice, always beautiful, trembled as labouring under the

immediate impulse of the Divinity--and his whole demeanour seemed to

bespeak, not the mere ordinary man, but the organ of the Church in which

she had vested her high power for delivering sinners from their load of

iniquity.

“Hast thou, my fair son,” said he, “faithfully recounted the

circumstances which have thus suddenly determined thee to a religious

life?”

“The sins I have confessed, my father,” answered Edward, “but I have

not yet told of a strange appearance, which, acting in my mind, hath, I

think, aided to determine my resolution.”

“Tell it, then, now,” returned the Sub-Prior; “it is thy duty to

leave me uninstructed in nought, so that thereby I may understand the

temptation that besets thee.”

“I tell it with unwillingness,” said Edward; “for although, God wot, I

speak but the mere truth, yet even while my tongue speaks it as truth,

my own ears receive it as fable.”

“Yet say the whole,” said Father Eustace; “neither fear rebuke from me,

seeing I may know reasons for receiving as true that which others might

regard as fabulous.”

“Know, then, father,” replied Edward, “that betwixt hope and

despair--and, heavens! what a hope!--the hope to find the corpse mangled

and crushed hastily in amongst the bloody clay which the foot of the

scornful victor had trod down upon my good, my gentle, my courageous

brother,--I sped to the glen called Corri-nan-shian; but, as your

reverence has been already informed, neither the grave, which my

unhallowed wishes had in spite of my better self longed to see, nor any

appearance of the earth having been opened, was visible in the solitary

spot where Martin had, at morning yesterday, seen the fatal hillock.

You know your dalesmen, father. The place hath an evil name, and this

deception of the sight inclined them to leave it. My companions became

affrighted, and hastened down the glen as men caught in trespass. My

hopes were too much blighted, my mind too much agitated, to fear either

the living or the dead. I descended the glen more slowly than they,

often looking back, and not ill pleased with the poltroonery of my

companions, which left me to my own perplexed and moody humour, and

induced them to hasten into the broader dale. They were already out of

sight, and lost amongst the windings of the glen, when, looking back, I

saw a female form standing beside the fountain----”

“How, my fair son?” said the Sub-Prior, “beware you jest not with your

present situation!”

“I jest not, father,” answered the youth; “it may be I shall never jest

again--surely not for many a day. I saw, I say, the form of a female

clad in white, such as the Spirit which haunts the house of Avenel is

supposed to be. Believe me, my father, for, by heaven and earth, I say

nought but what I saw with these eyes!”

“I believe thee, my son,” said the monk; “proceed in thy strange story.”

“The apparition,” said Edward Glendinning, “sung, and thus ran her lay;

for, strange as it may seem to you, her words abide by my remembrance as

if they had been sung to me from infancy upward:--

'Thou who seek'st my fountain lone,

With thoughts and hopes thou dar'st not own;

Whose heart within leap'd wildly glad

When most his brow seem'd dark and sad;

Hie thee back, thou find'st not here

Corpse or coffin, grave or bier;

The Dead Alive is gone and fled--

Go thou, and join the Living Dead!

'The Living Dead, whose sober brow

Oft shrouds such thoughts as thou hast now,

Whose hearts within are seldom cured

Of passions by their vows abjured;

Where, under sad and solemn show,

Vain hopes are nursed, wild wishes glow.

Seek the convent's vaulted room,

Prayer and vigil be thy doom;

Doff the green, and don the gray,

To the cloister hence away!'”

“'Tis a wild lay,” said the Sub-Prior, “and chanted, I fear me, with

no good end. But we have power to turn the machinations of Satan to his

shame. Edward, thou shalt go with me as thou desirest; thou shalt prove

the life for which I have long thought thee best fitted--thou shalt aid,

my son, this trembling hand of mine to sustain the Holy Ark, which bold

unhallowed men press rashly forward to touch and to profane.--Wilt thou

not first see thy mother?”

“I will see no one,” said Edward, hastily; “I will risk nothing that

may shake the purpose of my heart. From Saint Mary's they shall learn

my destination--all of them shall learn it. My mother--Mary Avenel--my

restored and happy brother--they shall all know that Edward lives no

longer to the world to be a clog on their happiness. Mary shall no

longer need to constrain her looks and expressions to coldness because I

am nigh. She shall no longer----”

“My son,” said the Sub-Prior, interrupting him, “it is not by looking

back on the vanities and vexations of this world, that we fit ourselves

for the discharge of duties which are not of it. Go, get our horses

ready, and, as we descend the glen together, I will teach thee the

truths through which the fathers and wise men of old had that precious

alchemy, which can convert suffering into happiness.”

Chapter the Thirty-Third.

Now, on my faith, this gear is all entangled,

Like to the yarn-clew of the drowsy knitter,

Dragg'd by the frolic kitten through the cabin,

While the good dame sits nodding o'er the fire!

Masters, attend; 'twill crave some skill to clear it.

OLD PLAY.

Edward, with the speed of one who doubts the steadiness of his own

resolution, hastened to prepare the horses for their departure, and at

the same time thanked and dismissed the neighbours who had come to his

assistance, and who were not a little surprised both at the suddenness

of his proposed departure, and at the turn affairs had taken.

“Here's cold hospitality,” quoth Dan of the Howlet-hirst to his

comrades; “I trow the Glendinnings may die and come alive right oft, ere

I put foot in stirrup again for the matter.”

Martin soothed them by placing food and liquor before them. They ate

sullenly, however, and departed in bad humour.

The joyful news that Halbert Glendinning lived, was quickly communicated

through the sorrowing family. The mother wept and thanked Heaven

alternately; until her habits of domestic economy awakening as her

feelings became calmer, she observed, “It would be an unco task to

mend the yetts, and what were they to do while they were broken in that

fashion? At open doors dogs come in.”

Tibb remarked, “She aye thought Halbert was ower gleg at his weapon to

be killed sae easily by ony Sir Piercie of them a'. They might say of

these Southrons as they liked; but they had not the pith and wind of a

canny Scot, when it came to close grips.”

On Mary Avenel the impression was inconceivably deeper. She had but

newly learned to pray, and it seemed to her that her prayers had been

instantly answered--that the compassion of Heaven, which she had learned

to implore in the words of Scripture, had descended upon her after a

manner almost miraculous, and recalled the dead from the grave at the

sound of her lamentations. There was a dangerous degree of enthusiasm in

this strain of feeling, but it originated in the purest devotion.

A silken and embroidered muffler, one of the few articles of more costly

attire which she possessed, was devoted to the purpose of wrapping up

and concealing the sacred volume, which henceforth she was to regard

as her chiefest treasure, lamenting only that, for want of a fitting

interpreter, much must remain to her a book closed and a fountain

sealed. She was unaware of the yet greater danger she incurred, of

putting an imperfect or even false sense upon some of the doctrines

which appeared most comprehensible. But Heaven had provided against both

these hazards.

While Edward was preparing the horses, Christie of the Clinthill again

solicited his orders respecting the reformed preacher, Henry Warden,

and again the worthy monk laboured to reconcile in his own mind the

compassion and esteem which, almost in spite of him, he could not help

feeling for his former companion, with the duty which he owed to the

Church. The unexpected resolution of Edward had removed, he thought, the

chief objection to his being left at Glendearg.

“If I carry this Well-wood, or Warden, to the Monastery.” he thought,

“he must die--die in his heresy--perish body and soul. And though such a

measure was once thought advisable, to strike terror into the heretics,

yet such is now their daily increasing strength, that it may rather

rouse them to fury and to revenge. True, he refuses to pledge himself

to abstain from sowing his tares among the wheat; but the ground here

is too barren to receive them. I fear not his making impression on these

poor women, the vassals of the Church, and bred up in due obedience to

her behests. The keen, searching, inquiring, and bold disposition of

Edward, might have afforded fuel to the fire; but that is removed, and

there is nothing left which the flame may catch to.--Thus shall he have

no power to spread his evil doctrines abroad, and yet his life shall be

preserved, and it may be his soul rescued as a prey from the fowler's

net. I will myself contend with him in argument; for when we studied in

common, I yielded not to him, and surely the cause for which I struggle

will support me, were I yet more weak than I deem myself. Were this man

reclaimed from his errors, an hundred-fold more advantage would arise

to the Church from his spiritual regeneration, than from his temporal

death.”

Having finished these meditations, in which there was at once goodness

of disposition and narrowness of principle, a considerable portion

of self-opinion, and no small degree of self-delusion, the Sub-Prior

commanded the prisoner to be brought into his presence.

“Henry,” he said, “whatever a rigid sense of duty may demand of me,

ancient friendship and Christian compassion forbid me to lead thee to

assured death. Thou wert wont to be generous, though stern and stubborn

in thy resolves; let not thy sense of what thine own thoughts term duty,

draw thee farther than mine have done. Remember, that every sheep whom

thou shalt here lead astray from the fold, will be demanded in time and

through eternity of him who hath left thee the liberty of doing such

evil. I ask no engagement of thee, save that thou remain a prisoner on

thy word at this tower, and wilt appear when summoned.”

“Thou hast found an invention to bind my hands,” replied the preacher,

“more sure than would have been the heaviest shackles in the prison

of thy convent. I will not rashly do what may endanger thee with thy

unhappy superiors, and I will be the more cautious, because, if we had

farther opportunity of conference, I trust thine own soul may yet be

rescued as a brand from the burning, and that, casting from thee the

livery of Anti-Christ, that trader in human sins and human souls, I may

yet assist thee to lay hold on the Rock of Ages.”

The Sub-Prior heard the sentiment, so similar to that which had occurred

to himself, with the same kindly feelings with which the game-cock hears

and replies to the challenge of his rival.

“I bless God and Our Lady,” said he, drawing himself up, “that my

faith is already anchored on that Rock on which Saint Peter founded his

Church.”

“It is a perversion of the text,” said the eager Henry Warden, “grounded

on a vain play upon words--a most idle paronomasia.”

The controversy would have been rekindled, and in all probability--for

what can insure the good temper and moderation of polemics?--might have

ended in the preacher's being transported a captive to the Monastery,

had not Christie of the Clinthill observed that it was growing late, and

that he, having to descend the glen, which had no good reputation, cared

not greatly for travelling there after sunset. The Sub-Prior, therefore,

stifled his desire of argument, and again telling the preacher, that he

trusted to his gratitude and generosity, he bade him farewell.

“Be assured, my old friend,” replied Warden, “that no willing act of

mine shall be to thy prejudice. But if my Master shall place work before

me, I must obey God rather than man.”

These two men, both excellent from natural disposition and acquired

knowledge, had more points of similarity than they themselves would have

admitted. In truth, the chief distinction betwixt them was, that the

Catholic, defending a religion which afforded little interest to the

feelings, had, in his devotion to the cause he espoused, more of the

head than of the heart, and was politic, cautious, and artful; while

the Protestant, acting under the strong impulse of more lately-adopted

conviction, and feeling, as he justly might, a more animated confidence

in his cause, was enthusiastic, eager, and precipitate in his desire to

advance it. The priest would have been contented to defend, the preacher

aspired to conquer; and, of course, the impulse by which the latter was

governed, was more active and more decisive. They could not part from

each other without a second pressure of hands, and each looked in the

face of his old companion, as he bade him adieu, with a countenance

strongly expressive of sorrow, affection, and pity.

Father Eustace then explained briefly to Dame Glendinning, that this

person was to be her guest for some days, forbidding her and her whole

household, under high spiritual censures, to hold any conversation with

him on religious subjects, but commanding her to attend to his wants in

all other particulars.

“May Our Lady forgive me, reverend father,” said Dame Glendinning,

somewhat dismayed at this intelligence, “but I must needs say, that ower

mony guests have been the ruin of mony a house, and I trow they will

bring down Glendearg. First came the Lady of Avenel--(her soul be at

rest--she meant nae ill)--but she brought with her as mony bogles and

fairies, as hae kept the house in care ever since, sae that we have been

living as it were in a dream. And then came that English knight, if it

please you, and if he hasna killed my son outright, he has chased him

aff the gate, and it may be lang eneugh ere I see him again--forby the

damage done to outer door and inner door. And now your reverence has

given me the charge of a heretic, who, it is like, may bring the great

horned devil himself down upon us all; and they say that it is neither

door nor window will serve him, but he will take away the side of the

auld tower along with him. Nevertheless, reverend father, your pleasure

is doubtless to be done to our power.”

“Go to, woman,” said the Sub-Prior; “send for workmen from the clachan,

and let them charge the expense of their repairs to the Community, and I

will give the treasurer warrant to allow them. Moreover, in settling the

rental mails, and feu-duties, thou shalt have allowance for the trouble

and charges to which thou art now put, and I will cause strict search to

be made after thy son.”

The dame curtsied deep and low at each favourable expression; and when

the Sub-Prior had done speaking, she added her farther hope that

the Sub-Prior would hold some communing with her gossip the Miller,

concerning the fate of his daughter, and expound to him that the chance

had by no means happened through any negligence on her part.

“I sair doubt me, father,” she said, “whether Mysie finds her way back

to the Mill in a hurry; but it was all her father's own fault that let

her run lamping about the country, riding on bare-backed naigs, and

never settling to do a turn of wark within doors, unless it were to

dress dainties at dinner-time for his ain kyte.”

“You remind me, dame, of another matter of urgency,” said Father

Eustace; “and, God knows, too many of them press on me at this moment.

This English knight must be sought out, and explanation given to him of

these most strange chances. The giddy girl must also be recovered. If

she hath suffered in reputation by this unhappy mistake, I will not hold

myself innocent of the disgrace. Yet how to find them out I know not.”

“So please you,” said Christie of the Clinthill, “I am willing to take

the chase, and bring them back by fair means or foul; for though

you have always looked as black as night at me, whenever we have

forgathered, yet I have not forgotten that had it not been for you,

my neck would have kend the weight of my four quarters. If any man

can track the tread of them, I will say in the face of both Merse and

Teviotdale, and take the Forest to boot, I am that man. But first I have

matters to treat of on my master's score, if you will permit me to ride

down the glen with you.”

“Nay, but my friend,” said the Sub-Prior, “thou shouldst remember I

have but slender cause to trust thee for a companion through a place so

solitary.”

“Tush! tush!” said the Jackman, “fear me not; I had the worst too surely

to begin that sport again. Besides, have I not said a dozen of times,

I owe you a life? and when I owe a man either a good turn or a bad, I

never fail to pay it sooner or later. Moreover, beshrew me if I care to

go alone down the glen, or even with my troopers, who are, every loon

of them, as much devil's bairns as myself; whereas, if your reverence,

since that is the word, take beads and psalter, and I come along with

jack and spear, you will make the devils take the air, and I will make

all human enemies take the earth.”

Edward here entered, and told his reverence that his horse was prepared.

At this instant his eye caught his mother's, and the resolution which he

had so strongly formed was staggered when he recollected the necessity

of bidding her farewell. The Sub-Prior saw his embarrassment, and came

to his relief.

“Dame,” said he, “I forgot to mention that your son Edward goes with me

to Saint Mary's, and will not return for two or three days.”

“You'll be wishing to help him to recover his brother? May the saints

reward your kindness!”

The Sub-Prior returned the benediction which, in this instance, he had

not very well deserved, and he and Edward set forth on their route. They

were presently followed by Christie, who came up with his followers at

such a speedy pace, as intimated sufficiently that his wish to obtain

spiritual convoy through the glen, was extremely sincere. He had,

however, other matters to stimulate his speed, for he was desirous to

communicate to the Sub-Prior a message from his master Julian, connected

with the delivery of the prisoner Warden; and having requested the

Sub-Prior to ride with him a few yards before Edward, and the troopers

of his own party, he thus addressed him, sometimes interrupting his

discourse in a manner testifying that his fear of supernatural beings

was not altogether lulled to rest by his confidence in the sanctity of

his fellow-traveller.

“My master,” said the rider, “deemed he had sent you an acceptable gift

in that old heretic preacher; but it seems, from the slight care you

have taken of him, that you make small account of the boon.”

“Nay,” said the Sub-Prior, “do not thus judge of it. The Community

must account highly of the service, and will reward it to thy master in

goodly fashion. But this man and I are old friends, and I trust to bring

him back from the paths of perdition.”

“Nay,” said the moss-trooper, “when I saw you shake hands at the

beginning I counted that you would fight it all out in love and honour,

and that there would be no extreme dealings betwixt ye--however it is

all one to my master--Saint Mary! what call you yon, Sir Monk?”

“The branch of a willow streaming across the path betwixt us and the

sky.”

“Beshrew me,” said Christie, “if it looked not like a man's hand holding

a sword.--But touching my master, he, like a prudent man, hath kept

himself aloof in these broken times, until he could see with precision

what footing he was to stand upon. Right tempting offers he hath had

from the Lords of Congregation, whom you call heretics; and at one time

he was minded, to be plain with you, to have taken their way--for he was

assured that the Lord James [Footnote: Lord James Stewart, afterwards

the Regent Murray.] was coming this road at the head of a round body of

cavalry. And accordingly Lord James did so far reckon upon him, that

he sent this man Warden, or whatsoever be his name, to my master's

protection, as an assured friend; and, moreover, with tidings that he

himself was marching hitherward at the head of a strong body of horse.”

“Now, Our Lady forfend!” said the Sub-Prior.

“Amen!” answered Christie, in some trepidation, “did your reverence see

aught?”

“Nothing whatever,” replied the monk; “it was thy tale which wrested

from me that exclamation.”

“And it was some cause,” replied he of the Clinthill, “for if Lord James

should come hither, your Halidome would smoke for it. But be of good

cheer--that expedition is ended before it was begun. The Baron of Avenel

had sure news that Lord James has been fain to march westward with his

merry-men, to protect Lord Semple against Cassilis and the Kennedies.

By my faith, it will cost him a brush; for wot ye what they say of that

name,--

“Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr,

Portpatrick and the cruives of Cree,

No man need think for to bide there,

Unless he court Saint Kennedie.'”

“Then,” said the Sub-Prior, “the Lord James's purpose of coming

southwards being broken, cost this person, Henry Warden, a cold

reception at Avenel Castle.”

“It would not have been altogether so rough a one,” said the

mosstrooper; “for my master was in heavy thought what to do in these

unsettled times, and would scarce have hazarded misusing a man sent to

him by so terrible a leader as the Lord James. But, to speak the truth,

some busy devil tempted the old man to meddle with my master's Christian

liberty of hand-fasting with Catherine of Newport. So that broke the

wand of peace between them, and now ye may have my master, and all the

force he can make, at your devotion, for Lord James never forgave wrong

done to him; and if he come by the upper hand, he will have Julian's

head if there were never another of the name, as it is like there is

not, excepting the bit slip of a lassie yonder. And now I have told you

more of my master's affairs than he would thank me for; but you have

done me a frank turn once, and I may need one at your hands again.”

“Thy frankness,” said the Sub-Prior, “shall surely advantage thee; for

much it concerns the Church in these broken times to know the purposes

and motives of those around us. But what is it that thy master expects

from us in reward of good service? for I esteem him one of those who are

not willing to work without their hire.”

“Nay, that I can tell you flatly; for Lord James had promised him, in

case he would be of his faction in these parts, an easy tack of the

teindsheaves of his own Barony of Avenel, together with the lands of

Cranberry-moor, which lie intersected with his own. And he will look for

no less at your hand.”

“But there is old Gilbert of Cranberry-moor,” said the Sub-Prior; “what

are we to make of him? The heretic Lord James may take on him to dispone

upon the goods and lands of the Halidome at his pleasure, because,

doubtless, but for the protection of God, and the baronage which yet

remain faithful to their creed, he may despoil us of them by force; but

while they are the property of the Community, we may not take steadings

from ancient and faithful vassals, to gratify the covetousness of those

who serve God only from the lucre of gain.”

“By the mass,” said Christie, “it is well talking, Sir Priest; but when

ye consider that Gilbert has but two half-starved cowardly peasants to

follow him, and only an auld jaded aver to ride upon, fitter for the

plough than for manly service; and that the Baron of Avenel never rides

with fewer than ten jackmen at his back, and oftener with fifty, bodin

in all that effeirs to war as if they were to do battle for a kingdom,

and mounted on nags that nicker at the clash of the sword as if it were

the clank of the lid of a corn-chest--I say, when ye have computed all

this, ye may guess what course will best serve your Monastery.”

“Friend,” said the monk, “I would willingly purchase thy master's

assistance on his own terms, since times leave us no better means of

defence against sacrilegious spoliation of heresy; but to take from a

poor man his patrimony--”

“For that matter,” said the rider, “his seat would scarce be a soft one,

if my master thought that Gilbert's interest stood betwixt him and what

he wishes. The Halidome has land enough, and Gilbert may be quartered

elsewhere.”

“We will consider the possibility of so disposing the matter,” said

the monk, “and will expect in consequence your master's most active

assistance, with all the followers he can make, to join in the defence

of the Halidome, against any force by which it may be threatened.”

“A man's hand and a mailed glove on that,” said the jackman. “They

[Footnote: As some atonement for their laxity of morals on most

occasions, the Borderers were severe observers of the faith which they

had pledged, even to an enemy. If any person broke his word so plighted,

the individual to whom faith had not been observed, used to bring to the

next Border-meeting a glove hung on the point of a spear, and proclaim

to Scots and English the name of the defaulter. This was accounted

so great a disgrace to all connected with him, that his own clansmen

sometimes destroyed him, to escape the infamy he had brought on them.

Constable, a spy engaged by Sir Ralph Sadler, talks of two Border

thieves, whom he used as his guides:--“That they would not care to

steal, and yet that they would not betray any man that trusts in them,

for all the gold in Scotland or in France. They are my guides and

outlaws. If they would betray me they might get their pardons, and cause

me to be hanged; but I have tried them ere this.”--_Sadler's letters

during the Northern Insurrection._]

call us marauders, thieves, and what not; but the side we take we hold

by.--And I will be blithe when my Baron comes to a point which side he

will take, for the castle is a kind of hell, (Our Lady forgive me for

naming such a word in this place!) while he is in his mood, studying how

he may best advantage himself. And now, Heaven be praised, we are in

the open valley, and I may swear a round oath, should aught happen to

provoke it.”

“My friend,” said the Sub-Prior, “thou hast little merit in abstaining

from oaths or blasphemy, if it be only out of fear of evil spirits.”

“Nay, I am not quite a Church vassal yet,” said the jackman, “and if

you link the curb too tight on a young horse, I promise you he will

rear--Why, it is much for me to forbear old customs on any account

whatever.”

The night being fine, they forded the river at the spot where the

Sacristan met with his unhappy encounter with the spirit. As soon as

they arrived at the gate of the Monastery, the porter in waiting eagerly

exclaimed, “Reverend father, the Lord Abbot is most anxious for your

presence.”

“Let these strangers be carried to the great hall,” said the Sub-Prior,

“and be treated with the best by the cellarer; reminding them, however,

of that modesty and decency of conduct which becometh guests in a house

like this.”

“But the Lord Abbot demands you instantly, my venerable brother,”

said Father Philip, arriving in great haste. “I have not seen him more

discouraged or desolate of counsel since the field of Pinkie-cleugh was

stricken.”

“I come, my good brother, I come,” said Father Eustace. “I pray thee,

good brother, let this youth, Edward Glendinning, be conveyed to the

Chamber of the Novices, and placed under their instructor. God hath

touched his heart, and he proposeth laying aside the vanities of the

world, to become a brother of our holy order; which, if his good parts

be matched with fitting docility and humility, he may one day live to

adorn.”

“My very venerable brother,” exclaimed old Father Nicholas, who came

hobbling with a third summons to the Sub-Prior, “I pray thee to hasten

to our worshipful Lord Abbot. The holy patroness be with us! never saw

I Abbot of the House of St. Mary's in such consternation; and yet I

remember me well when Father Ingelram had the news of Flodden-field.”

“I come, I come, venerable brother,” said Father Eustace--And having

repeatedly ejaculated “I come!” he at last went to the Abbot in good

earnest.

Chapter the Thirty-Fourth.

It is not texts will do it--Church artillery

Are silenced soon by real ordnance,

And canons are but vain opposed to cannon.

Go, coin your crosier, melt your church plate down

Bid the starved soldier banquet in your halls,

And quaff your long-saved hogsheads--Turn them out

Thus primed with your good cheer, to guard your wall,

And they will venture for't.--

OLD PLAY.

The Abbot received his counsellor with a tremulous eagerness of welcome,

which announced to the Sub-Prior an extreme agitation of spirits,

and the utmost need of good counsel. There was neither mazer-dish nor

standing-cup upon the little table, at the elbow of his huge chair

of state; his beads alone lay there, and it seemed as if he had been

telling them in his extremity of distress. Beside the beads was placed

the mitre of the Abbot, of an antique form, and blazing with precious

stones, and the rich and highly-embossed crosier rested against the same

table.

The Sacristan and old Father Nicholas had followed the Sub-Prior into

the Abbot's apartment, perhaps with the hope of learning something

of the important matter which seemed to be in hand.--They were not

mistaken; for, after having ushered in the Sub-Prior, and being

themselves in the act of retiring, the Abbot made them a signal to

remain.

“My brethren,” he said, “it is well known to you with what painful zeal

we have overseen the weighty affairs of this house committed to our

unworthy hand--your bread hath been given to you, and your water

hath been sure--I have not wasted the revenues of the Convent on vain

pleasures, as hunting or hawking, or in change of rich cope or alb, or

in feasting idle bards and jesters, saving those who, according to old

wont, were received in time of Christmas and Easter. Neither have I

enriched either mine own relations nor strange women, at the expense of

the Patrimony.”

“There hath not been such a Lord Abbot,” said Father Nicholas, “to my

knowledge, since the days of Abbot Ingelram, who----”

At that portentous word, which always preluded a long story, the Abbot

broke in.

“May God have mercy on his soul!--we talk not of him now.--What I would

know of ye, my brethren, is, whether I have, in your mind, faithfully

discharged the duties of mine office?”

“There has never been subject of complaint,” answered the Sub-Prior.

The Sacristan, more diffuse, enumerated the various acts of indulgence

and kindness which the mild government of Abbot Boniface had

conferred on the brotherhood of Saint Mary's--the _indulgentiae_--the

_gratias_--the _biberes_-the weekly mess of boiled almonds--the

enlarged accommodation of the refectory--the better arrangement of

the cellarage--the improvement of the revenue of the Monastery--the

diminution of the privations of the brethren.

“You might have added, my brother,” said the Abbot, listening with

melancholy acquiescence to the detail of his own merits, “that I caused

to be built that curious screen, which secureth the cloisters from the

north-east wind.--But all these things avail nothing--As we read in holy

Maccabee, _Capta est civitas per voluntatem Dei_. It hath cost me no

little thought, no common toil, to keep these weighty matters in such

order as you have seen them--there was both barn and binn to be kept

full--Infirmary, dormitory, guest-hall, and refectory, to be looked

to--processions to be made, confessions to be heard, strangers to be

entertained, _veniae_ to be granted or refused; and I warrant me, when

every one of you was asleep in your cell, the Abbot hath lain awake for

a full hour by the bell, thinking how these matters might be ordered

seemly and suitably.”

“May we ask, reverend my lord,” said the Sub-Prior, “what additional

care has now been thrown upon you, since your discourse seems to point

that way?”

“Marry, this it is,” said the Abbot. “The talk is not now of _biberes_,

[Footnote: The _biberes, caritas_, and boiled almonds, of which Abbot

Boniface speaks, were special occasions for enjoying luxuries, afforded

to the monks by grants from different sovereigns, or from other

benefactors to the convent. There is one of these charters called _De

Pitancia Centum Librarum_ By this charter, which is very curious, our

Robert Bruce, on the 10th January, and in the twelfth year of his reign,

assigns, out of the customs of Berwick, and failing them, out of the

customs of Edinburgh or Haddington, the sum of one hundred pounds, at

the half-yearly terms of Pentecost and Saint Martin's in winter, to the

abbot and community of the monks of Melrose. The precise purpose of this

annuity is to furnish to each of the monks of the said monastery, while

placed at food in the refectory, an extra mess of rice boiled with

milk, or of almonds, or peas, or other pulse of that kind which could

be procured in the country. This addition to their commons is to be

entitled the King's Mess. And it is declared, that although any monk

should, from some honest apology, want appetite or inclination to eat of

the king's mess, his share should, nevertheless, be placed on the table

with those of his brethren, and afterwards carried to the gate and

given to the poor. “Neither is it our pleasure,” continues the bountiful

sovereign, “that the dinner, which is or ought to be served up to the

said monks according to their ancient rule, should be diminished in

quantity, or rendered inferior in quality, on account of this our mess,

so furnished as aforesaid.” It is, moreover, provided, that the abbot,

with the consent of the most sage of his brethren, shall name a prudent

and decent monk for receiving, directing, and expending, all matters

concerning this annuity for the benefit of the community, agreeably to

the royal desire and intention, rendering a faithful account thereof

to the abbot and superiors of the same convent. And the same charter

declares the king's farther pleasure, that the said men of religion

should be bound yearly and for ever, in acknowledgment of the above

donation, to clothe fifteen poor men at the feast of Saint Martin in

winter, and to feed them on the same day, delivering to each of them

four ells of large or broad, or six ells of narrow cloth, and to each

also a new pair of shoes or sandals, according to their order; and if

the said monks shall fail in their engagements or any of them, it is the

king's will that the fault shall be redeemed by a double performance of

what has been omitted, to be executed at the sight of the chief forester

of Ettrick for the time being, and before the return of Saint Martin's

day succeeding that on which the omission has taken place.

Of this charter, respecting the pittance of 100_l_ assigned to furnish

the monks of Melrose with a daily mess of boiled rice, almonds, or other

pulse, to mend their commons, the antiquarian reader will be pleased,

doubtless, to see the original.