IV.

Good luck to your fishing, whom watch ye to-night? A man of mean, or a man of might? Is it layman or priest that must float in your cove, Or lover who crosses to visit his love? Hark! heard ye the Kelpy reply, as we pass'd,-- “God's blessing on the warder, he lock'd the bridge fast! All that come to my cove are sunk, Priest or layman, lover or monk.”

How long the damsel might have continued to sing, or where the terrified monk's journey might have ended, is uncertain. As she sung the last stanza, they arrived at, or rather in, a broad tranquil sheet of water, caused by a strong wear or damhead, running across the river, which dashed in a broad cataract over the barrier. The mule, whether from choice, or influenced by the suction of the current, made towards the cut intended to supply the convent mills, and entered it half swimming half wading, and pitching the unlucky monk to and fro in the saddle at a fearful rate.

As his person flew hither and thither, his garment became loose, and in an effort to retain it, his hand lighted on the volume of the Lady of Avenel which was in his bosom. No sooner had he grasped it, than his companion pitched him out of the saddle into the stream, where, still keeping her hand on his collar, she gave him two or three good souses in the watery fluid, so as to ensure that every other part of him had its share of wetting, and then quitted her hold when he was so near the side that by a slight effort (of a great one he was incapable) he might scramble on shore. This accordingly he accomplished, and turning his eyes to see what had become of his extraordinary companion, she was nowhere to be seen; but still he heard, as if from the surface of the river, and mixing with the noise of the water breaking over the damhead, a fragment of her wild song, which seemed to run thus:--

Landed--landed! the black book hath won. Else had you seen Berwick with morning sun! Sain ye, and save ye, and blithe mot ye be, For seldom they land that go swimming with me.

The ecstasy of the monk's terror could be endured no longer; his head grew dizzy, and, after staggering a few steps onward and running himself against a wall, he sunk down in a state of insensibility.

Chapter the Sixth.

Now let us sit in conclave. That these weeds Be rooted from the vineyard of the church. That these foul tares be severed from the wheat, We are, I trust, agreed.--Yet how to do this, Nor hurt the wholesome crop and tender vine-plants, Craves good advisement.

THE REFORMATION.

The vesper service in the Monastery Church of Saint Mary's was now over. The Abbot had disrobed himself of his magnificent vestures of ceremony, and resumed his ordinary habit, which was a black gown, worn over a white cassock, with a narrow scapulary; a decent and venerable dress, which was calculated to set off to advantage the portly mien of Abbot Boniface.

In quiet times no one could have filled the state of a mitred Abbot, for such was his dignity, more respectably than this worthy prelate. He had, no doubt, many of those habits of self-indulgence which men are apt to acquire who live for themselves alone. He was vain, moreover; and when boldly confronted, had sometimes shown symptoms of timidity, not very consistent with the high claims which he preferred as an eminent member of the church, or with the punctual deference which he exacted from his religious brethren, and all who were placed under his command. But he was hospitable, charitable, and by no means of himself disposed to proceed with severity against any one. In short, he would in other times have slumbered out his term of preferment with as much credit as any other “purple Abbot,” who lived easily, but at the same time decorously--slept soundly, and did not disquiet himself with dreams.

But the wide alarm spread through the whole Church of Rome by the progress of the reformed doctrines, sorely disturbed the repose of Abbot Boniface, and opened to him a wide field of duties and cares which he had never so much as dreamed of. There were opinions to be combated and refuted--practices to be inquired into--heretics to be detected and punished--the fallen off to be reclaimed--the wavering to be confirmed--scandal to be removed from the clergy, and the vigour of discipline to be re-established. Post upon post arrived at the Monastery of Saint Mary's--horses reeking, and riders exhausted--this from the Privy Council, that from the Primate of Scotland, and this other again from the Queen Mother, exhorting, approving, condemning, requesting advice upon this subject, and requiring information upon that.

These missives Abbot Boniface received with an important air of helplessness, or a helpless air of importance,--whichever the reader may please to term it, evincing at once gratified vanity, and profound trouble of mind. The sharp-witted Primate of Saint Andrews had foreseen the deficiencies of the Abbot of St. Mary's, and endeavoured to provide for them by getting admitted into his Monastery as Sub-Prior a brother Cistercian, a man of parts and knowledge, devoted to the service of the Catholic Church, and very capable not only to advise the Abbot on occasions of difficulty, but to make him sensible of his duty in case he should, from good-nature or timidity, be disposed to shrink from it.

Father Eustace played the same part in the Monastery as the old general who, in foreign armies, is placed at the elbow of the Prince of the Blood, who nominally commands in chief, on condition of attempting nothing without the advice of his dry-nurse; and he shared the fate of all such dry-nurses, being heartily disliked as well as feared by his principal. Still, however, the Primate's intention was fully answered. Father Eustace became the constant theme and often the bugbear of the worthy Abbot, who hardly dared to turn himself in his bed without, considering what Father Eustace would think of it. In every case of difficulty, Father Eustace was summoned, and his opinion asked; and no sooner was the embarrassment removed, than the Abbot's next thought was how to get rid of his adviser. In every letter which he wrote to those in power, he recommended Father Eustace to some high church preferment, a bishopric or an abbey; and as they dropped one after another, and were otherwise conferred, he began to think, as he confessed to the Sacristan in the bitterness of his spirit, that the Monastery of St. Mary's had got a life-rent lease of their Sub-Prior.

Yet more indignant he would have been, had he suspected that Father Eustace's ambition was fixed upon his own mitre, which, from some attacks of an apoplectic nature, deemed by the Abbot's friends to be more serious than by himself, it was supposed might be shortly vacant. But the confidence which, like other dignitaries, he reposed in his own health, prevented Abbot Boniface from imagining that it held any concatenation, with the motions of Father Eustace.

The necessity under which he found himself of consulting with his grand adviser, in cases of real difficulty, rendered the worthy Abbot particularly desirous of doing without him in all ordinary cases of administration, though not without considering what Father Eustace would have said of the matter. He scorned, therefore, to give a hint to the Sub-Prior of the bold stroke by which he had dispatched Brother Philip to Glendearg; but when the vespers came without his reappearance he became a little uneasy, the more as other matters weighed upon his mind. The feud with the warder or keeper of the bridge threatened to be attended with bad consequences, as the man's quarrel was taken up by the martial baron under whom he served; and pressing letters of an unpleasant tendency had just arrived from the Primate. Like a gouty man, who catches hold of his crutch while he curses the infirmity that induces him to use if, the Abbot, however reluctant, found himself obliged to require Eustace's presence, after the service was over, in his house, or rather palace, which was attached to, and made part of, the Monastery.

Abbot Boniface was seated in his high-backed chair, the grotesque carved back of which terminated in a mitre, before a fire where two or three large logs were reduced to one red glowing mass of charcoal. At his elbow, on an oaken stand, stood the remains of a roasted capon, on which his reverence had made his evening meal, flanked by a goodly stoup of Bordeaux of excellent flavour. He was gazing indolently on the fire, partly engaged in meditation on his past and present fortunes, partly occupied by endeavouring to trace towers and steeples in the red embers.

“Yes,” thought the Abbot to himself, “in that red perspective I could fancy to myself the peaceful towers of Dundrennan, where I passed my life ere I was called to pomp and to trouble. A quiet brotherhood we were, regular in our domestic duties; and when the frailties of humanity prevailed over us, we confessed, and were absolved by each other, and the most formidable part of the penance was the jest of the convent on the culprit. I can almost fancy that I see the cloister garden, and the pear-trees which I grafted with my own hands. And for what have I changed all this, but to be overwhelmed with business which concerns me not, to be called My Lord Abbot, and to be tutored by Father Eustace? I would these towers were the Abbey of Aberbrothwick, and Father Eustace the Abbot,--or I would he were in the fire on any terms, so I were rid of him! The Primate says our Holy Father, the Pope hath an adviser--I am sure he could not live a week with such a one as mine. Then there is no learning what Father Eustace thinks till you confess your own difficulties--No hint will bring forth his opinion--he is like a miser, who will not unbuckle his purse to bestow a farthing, until the wretch who needs it has owned his excess of poverty, and wrung out the boon by importunity. And thus I am dishonoured in the eyes of my religious brethren, who behold me treated like a child which hath no sense of its own--I will bear it no longer!--Brother Bennet,”--(a lay brother answered to his call)--” tell Father Eustace that I need not his presence.”

“I came to say to your reverence, that the holy father is entering even now from the cloisters.”

“Be it so,” said the Abbot, “he is welcome,--remove these things--or rather, place a trencher, the holy father may be a little hungry--yet, no--remove them, for there is no good fellowship in him--Let the stoup of wine remain, however, and place another cup.”

The lay brother obeyed these contradictory commands in the way he judged most seemly--he removed the carcass of the half-sacked capon, and placed two goblets beside the stoup of Bourdeaux. At the same instant entered Father Eustace.

He was a thin, sharp-faced, slight-made little man, whose keen grey eyes seemed almost to look through the person to whom he addressed himself. His body was emaciated not only with the fasts which he observed with rigid punctuality, but also by the active and unwearied exercise of his sharp and piercing intellect;--

A fiery soul, which working out its way, Fretted the puny body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay.

He turned with conventual reverence to the Lord Abbot; and as they stood together, it was scarce possible to see a more complete difference of form and expression. The good-natured rosy face and laughing eye of the Abbot, which even his present anxiety could not greatly ruffle, was a wonderful contrast to the thin pallid cheek and quick penetrating glance of the monk, in which an eager and keen spirit glanced through eyes to which it seemed to give supernatural lustre.

The Abbot opened the conversation by motioning to his monk to take a stool, and inviting to a cup of wine. The courtesy was declined with respect, yet not without a remark, that the vesper service was past.

“For the stomach's sake, brother,” said the Abbot, colouring a little--“You know the text.”

“It is a dangerous one,” answered the monk, “to handle alone, or at late hours. Out off from human society, the juice of the grape becomes a perilous companion of solitude, and therefore I ever shun it.”

Abbot Boniface had poured himself out a goblet which might hold about half an English pint; but, either struck with the truth of the observation, or ashamed to act in direct opposition to it, he suffered it to remain untasted before him, and immediately changed the subject.

“The Primate hath written to us,” said he, “to make strict search within our bounds after the heretical persons denounced in this list, who have withdrawn themselves from the justice which their opinions deserve. It is deemed probable that they will attempt to retire to England by our Borders, and the Primate requireth me to watch with vigilance, and what not.”

“Assuredly,” said the monk, “the magistrate should not bear the sword in vain--those be they that turn the world upside down--and doubtless your reverend wisdom will with due diligence second the exertions of the Right Reverend Father in God, being in the peremptory defence of the Holy Church.”

“Ay, but how is this to be done?” answered the Abbot; “Saint Mary aid us! The Primate writes to me as if I were a temporal baron--a man under command, having soldiers under him! He says, send forth--scour the country--guard the passes--Truly these men do not travel as those who would give their lives for nothing--the last who went south passed the dry-march at the Riding-burn with an escort of thirty spears, as our reverend brother the Abbot of Kelso did write unto us. How are cowls and scapularies to stop the way?”

“Your bailiff is accounted a good man at arms, holy father,” said Eustace; “your vassals are obliged to rise for the defence of the Holy Kirk--it is the tenure on which they hold their lands--if they will not come forth for the Church which gives them bread, let their possessions be given to others.”

“We shall not be wanting,” said the Abbot, collecting himself with importance, “to do whatever may advantage Holy Kirk--thyself shall hear the charge to our Bailiff and our officials--but here again is our controversy with the warden of the bridge and the Baron of Meigallot--Saint Mary! vexations do so multiply upon the House, and upon the generation, that a man wots not where to turn to! Thou didst say, Father Eustace, thou wouldst look into our evidents touching this free passage for the pilgrims?”

“I have looked into the Chartulary of the House, holy father,” said Eustace, “and therein I find a written and formal grant of all duties and customs payable at the drawbridge of Brigton, not only by ecclesiastics of this foundation, but by every pilgrim truly designed to accomplish his vows at this House, to the Abbot Allford, and the monks of the House of Saint Mary in Kennaquhair, from that time and for ever. The deed is dated on Saint Bridget's Even, in the year of Redemption, 1137, and bears the sign and seal of the granter, Charles of Meigallot, great-great-grandfather of this baron, and purports to be granted for the safety of his own soul, and for the weal of the souls of his father and mother, and of all his predecessors and successors, being Barons of Meigallot.”

“But he alleges,” said the Abbot, “that the bridge-wards have been in possession of these dues, and have rendered them available for more than fifty years--and the baron threatens violence--meanwhile, the journey of the pilgrims is interrupted, to the prejudice of their own souls and the diminution of the revenues of Saint Mary. The Sacristan advised us to put on a boat; but the warden, whom thou knowest to be a godless man, has sworn the devil tear him, but that if they put on a boat on the laird's stream, he will rive her board from board--and then some say we should compound the claim for a small sum in silver.” Here the Abbot paused a moment for a reply, but receiving none, he added, “But what thinkest thou, Father Eustace? why art thou silent?”

“Because I am surprised at the question which the Lord Abbot of Saint Mary's asks at the youngest of his brethren.”

“Youngest in time of your abode with us, Brother Eustace,” said the Abbot, “not youngest in years, or I think in experience. Sub-Prior also of this convent.”

“I am astonished,” continued Eustace, “that the Abbot of this venerable house should ask of any one whether he can alienate the patrimony of our holy and divine patroness, or give up to an unconscientious, and perhaps, a heretic baron, the rights conferred on this church by his devout progenitor. Popes and councils alike prohibit it--the honour of the living, and the weal of departed souls, alike forbid it--it may not be. To force, if he dare use it, we must surrender; but never by our consent should we see the goods of the church plundered, with as little scruple as he would drive off a herd of English beeves. Rouse yourself, Reverend father, and doubt nothing but that the good cause shall prevail. Whet the spiritual sword, and direct it against the wicked who would usurp our holy rights. Whet the temporal sword, if it be necessary, and stir up the courage and zeal of your loyal vassals.”

The Abbot sighed deeply. “All this,” he said, “is soon spoken by him who hath to act it not; but--” He was interrupted by the entrance of Bennet rather hastily. “The mule on which the Sacristan had set out in the morning had returned,” he said, “to the convent stable all over wet, and with the saddle turned round beneath her belly.”

“Sancta Maria!” said the Abbot, “our dear brother hath perished by the way!”

“It may not be,” said Eustace, hastily--“let the bell be tolled--cause the brethren to get torches--alarm the village--hurry down to the river--I myself will be the foremost.”

The real Abbot stood astonished and agape, when at once he beheld his office filled, and saw all which he ought to have ordered, going forward at the dictates of the youngest monk in the convent. But ere the orders of Eustace, which nobody dreamed of disputing, were carried into execution, the necessity was prevented by the sudden apparition of the Sacristan, whose supposed danger excited all the alarm.

Chapter the Seventh.

Raze out the written troubles of the brain, Cleanse the foul bosom of the perilous stuff That weighs upon the heart. MACBETH.

What betwixt cold and fright the afflicted Sacristan stood before his Superior, propped on the friendly arm of the convent miller, drenched with water, and scarce able to utter a syllable.

After various attempts to speak, the first words he uttered were,

“Swim we merrily--the moon shines bright.”

“Swim we merrily!” retorted the Abbot, indignantly; “a merry night have ye chosen for swimming, and a becoming salutation to your Superior!”

“Our brother is bewildered,” said Eustace;--“speak, Father Philip, how is it with you?”

“Good luck to your fishing,”

continued the Sacristan, making a most dolorous attempt at the tune of his strange companion.

“Good luck to your fishing!” repeated the Abbot, still more surprised than displeased; “by my halidome he is drunken with wine, and comes to our presence with his jolly catches in his throat! If bread and water can cure this folly--”

“With your pardon, venerable father,” said the Sub-Prior, “of water our brother has had enough; and methinks, the confusion of his eye, is rather that of terror, than of aught unbecoming his profession. Where did you find him, Hob Miller?”

“An it please your reverence, I did but go to shut the sluice of the mill--and as I was going to shut the sluice, I heard something groan near to me; but judging it was one of Giles Fletcher's hogs--for so please you he never shuts his gate--I caught up my lever, and was about--Saint Mary forgive me!--to strike where I heard the sound, when, as the saints would have it, I heard the second groan just like that of a living man. So I called up my knaves, and found the Father Sacristan lying wet and senseless under the wall of our kiln. So soon as we brought him to himself a bit, he prayed to be brought to your reverence, but I doubt me his wits have gone a bell-wavering by the road. It was but now that he spoke in somewhat better form.”

“Well!” said Brother Eustace, “thou hast done well, Hob Miller; only begone now, and remember a second time to pause, ere you strike in the dark.”

“Please your reverence, it shall be a lesson to me,” said the miller, “not to mistake a holy man for a hog again, so long as I live.” And, making a bow, with profound humility, the miller withdrew.

“And now that this churl is gone, Father Philip,” said Eustace, “wilt thou tell our venerable Superior what ails thee? art thou _vino gravatus,_ man? if so we will have thee to thy cell.”

“Water! water! not wine,” muttered the exhausted Sacristan.

“Nay,” said the monk, “if that be thy complaint, wine may perhaps cure thee;” and he reached him a cup, which the patient drank off to his great benefit.

“And now,” said the Abbot, “let his garments be changed, or rather let him be carried to the infirmary; for it will prejudice our health, should we hear his narrative while he stands there, steaming like a rising hoar-frost.”

“I will hear his adventure,” said Eustace, “and report it to your reverence.” And, accordingly, he attended the Sacristan to his cell. In about half an hour he returned to the Abbot.

“How is it with Father Philip?” said the Abbot; “and through what came he into such a state?”

“He comes from Glendearg, reverend sir,” said Eustace; “and for the rest, he telleth such a legend, as has not been heard in this Monastery for many a long day.” He then gave the Abbot the outlines of the Sacristan's adventures in the homeward journey, and added, that for some time he was inclined to think his brain was infirm, seeing he had sung, laughed, and wept all in the same breath.

“A wonderful thing it is to us,” said the Abbot, “that Satan has been permitted to put forth his hand thus far on one of our sacred brethren!”

“True,” said Father Eustace; “but for every text there is a paraphrase; and I have my suspicions, that if the drenching of Father Philip cometh of the Evil one, yet it may not have been altogether without his own personal fault.”

“How!” said the Father Abbot; “I will not believe that thou makest doubt that Satan, in former days, hath been permitted to afflict saints and holy men, even as he afflicted the pious Job?”

“God forbid I should make question of it,” said the monk, crossing himself; “yet, where there is an exposition of the Sacristan's tale, which is less than miraculous, I hold it safe to consider it at least, if not to abide by it. Now, this Hob the Miller hath a buxom daughter. Suppose--I say only suppose--that our Sacristan met her at the ford on her return from her uncle's on the other side, for there she hath this evening been--suppose, that, in courtesy, and to save her stripping hose and shoon, the Sacristan brought her across behind him-suppose he carried his familiarities farther than the maiden was willing to admit; and we may easily suppose, farther, that this wetting was the result of it.”

“And this legend invented to deceive us!” said the Superior, reddening with wrath; “but most strictly shall it be sifted and inquired into; it is not upon us that Father Philip must hope to pass the result of his own evil practices for doings of Satan. To-morrow cite the wench to appear before us--we will examine, and we will punish.”

“Under your reverence's favour,” said Eustace, “that were but poor policy. As things now stand with us, the heretics catch hold of each flying report which tends to the scandal of our clergy. We must abate the evil, not only by strengthening discipline, but also by suppressing and stifling the voice of scandal. If my conjectures are true, the miller's daughter will be silent for her own sake; and your reverence's authority may also impose silence on her father, and on the Sacristan. If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order, he can be punished with severity, but at the same time with secrecy. For what say the Decretals! Facinora ostendi dum punientur, flagitia autem abscondi debent.”

A sentence of Latin, as Eustace had before observed, had often much influence on the Abbot, because he understood it not fluently, and was ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance. On these terms they parted for the night.

The next day, Abbot Boniface strictly interrogated Philip on the real cause of his disaster of the previous night. But the Sacristan stood firm to his story; nor was he found to vary from any point of it, although the answers he returned were in some degree incoherent, owing to his intermingling with them ever and anon snatches of the strange damsel's song, which had made such deep impression on his imagination, that he could not prevent himself from imitating it repeatedly in the course of his examination. The Abbot had compassion with the Sacristan's involuntary frailty, to which something supernatural seemed annexed, and finally became of opinion, that Father Eustace's more natural explanation was rather plausible than just. And, indeed, although we have recorded the adventure as we find it written down, we cannot forbear to add that there was a schism on the subject in the convent, and that several of the brethren pretended to have good reason for thinking that the miller's black-eyed daughter was at the bottom of the affair after all. Whichever way it might be interpreted, all agreed that it had too ludicrous a sound to be permitted to get abroad, and therefore the Sacristan was charged, on his vow of obedience, to say no more of his ducking; an injunction which, having once eased his mind by telling his story, it may be well conjectured that he joyfully obeyed.

The attention of Father Eustace was much less forcibly arrested by the marvellous tale of the Sacristan's danger, and his escape, than by the mention of the volume which he had brought with him from the Tower of Glendearg. A copy of the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, had found its way even into the proper territory of the church, and had been discovered in one of the most hidden and sequestered recesses of the Halidome of Saint Mary's.

He anxiously requested to see the volume. In this the Sacristan was unable to gratify him, for he had lost it, as far as he recollected, when the supernatural being, as he conceived her to be, took her departure from him. Father Eustace went down to the spot in person, and searched all around it, in hopes of recovering the volume in question; but his labour was in vain. He returned to the Abbot, and reported that it must have fallen into the river or the mill-stream; “for I will hardly believe,” he said, “that Father Philip's musical friend would fly off with a copy of the Holy Scriptures.”

“Being,” said the Abbot, “as it is, an heretical translation, it may be thought that Satan may have power over it.”

“Ay!” said Father Eustace, “it is indeed his chiefest magazine of artillery, when he inspireth presumptuous and daring men to set forth their own opinions and expositions of Holy Writ. But though thus abused, the Scriptures are the source of our salvation, and are no more to be reckoned unholy, because of these rash men's proceedings, than a powerful medicine is to be contemned, or held poisonous, because bold and evil leeches have employed it to the prejudice of their patients. With the permission of your reverence, I would that this matter were looked into more closely. I will myself visit the Tower of Glendearg ere I am many hours older, and we shall see if any spectre or white woman of the wild will venture to interrupt my journey or return. Have I your reverend permission and your blessing?” he added, but in a tone that appeared to set no great store by either.

“Thou hast both, my brother,” said the Abbot; but no sooner had Eustace left the apartment, than Boniface could not help breaking on the willing ear of the Sacristan his sincere wish, that any spirit, black, white, or gray, would read the adviser such a lesson, as to cure him of his presumption in esteeming himself wiser than the whole community.

“I wish him no worse lesson,” said the Sacristan, “than to go swimming merrily down the river with a ghost behind, and Kelpies, night-crows, and mud-eels, all waiting to have a snatch at him.

Merrily swim we, the moon shines bright! Good luck to your fishing, whom watch you to-night?”

“Brother Philip,” said the Abbot, “we exhort thee to say thy prayers, compose thyself, and banish that foolish chant from thy mind;--it is but a deception of the devil's.”

“I will essay, reverend Father,” said the Sacristan, “but the tune hangs by my memory like a bur in a beggar's rags; it mingles with the psalter--the very bells of the convent seem to repeat the words, and jingle to the tune; and were you to put me to death at this very moment, it is my belief I should die singing it--'Now swim we merrily'--it is as it were a spell upon me.”

He then again began to warble

“Good luck to your fishing.”

And checking himself in the strain with difficulty, he exclaimed, “It is too certain--I am but a lost priest! Swim we merrily--I shall sing it at the very mass--Wo is me! I shall sing all the remainder of my life, and yet never be able to change the tune!”

The honest Abbot replied, “he knew many a good fellow in the same condition;” and concluded the remark with “ho! ho! ho!” for his reverence, as the reader may partly have observed, was one of those dull folks who love a quiet joke.

The Sacristan, well acquainted with his Superior's humour, endeavoured to join in the laugh, but his unfortunate canticle came again across his imagination, and interrupted the hilarity of his customary echo.

“By the rood, Brother Philip,” said the Abbot, much moved, “you become altogether intolerable! and I am convinced that such a spell could not subsist over a person of religion, and in a religious house, unless he were under mortal sin. Wherefore, say the seven penitentiary psalms--make diligent use of thy scourge and hair-cloth--refrain for three days from all food, save bread and water--I myself will shrive thee, and we will see if this singing devil may be driven out of thee; at least I think Father Eustace himself could devise no better exorcism.”

The Sacristan sighed deeply, but knew remonstrance was vain. He retired therefore to his cell, to try how far psalmody might be able to drive off the sounds of the syren tune which haunted his memory.

Meanwhile, Father Eustace proceeded to the drawbridge, in his way to the lonely valley of Glendearg. In a brief conversation with the churlish warder, he had the address to render him more tractable in the controversy betwixt him and the convent. He reminded him that his father had been a vassal under the community; that his brother was childless; and that their possession would revert to the church on his death, and might be either granted to himself the warder, or to some greater favourite of the Abbot, as matters chanced to stand betwixt them at the time. The Sub-Prior suggested to him also, the necessary connexion of interests betwixt the Monastery and the office which this man enjoyed. He listened with temper to his rude and churlish answers; and by keeping his own interest firm pitched in his view, he had the satisfaction to find that Peter gradually softened his tone, and consented to let every pilgrim who travelled upon foot pass free of exaction until Pentocost next; they who travelled on horseback or otherwise, contenting to pay the ordinary custom. Having thus accommodated a matter in which the weal of the convent was so deeply interested, Father Eustace proceeded on his journey.

Chapter the Eighth.

Nay, dally not with time, the wise man's treasure, Though fools are lavish on't--the fatal Fisher Hooks souls, while we waste moments. OLD PLAY.

A November mist overspread the little valley, up which slowly but steadily rode the Monk Eustace. He was not insensible to the feeling of melancholy inspired by the scene and by the season. The stream seemed to murmur with a deep and oppressed note, as if bewailing the departure of autumn. Among the scattered copses which here and there fringed its banks, the oak-trees only retained that pallid green that precedes their russet hue. The leaves of the willows were most of them stripped from the branches, lay rustling at each breath, and disturbed by every step of the mule; while the foliage of other trees, totally withered, kept still precarious possession of the boughs, waiting the first wind to scatter them.

The monk dropped into the natural train of pensive thought which these autumnal emblems of mortal hopes are peculiarly calculated to inspire. “There,” he said, looking at the leaves which lay strewed around, “lie the hopes of early youth, first formed that they may soonest wither, and loveliest in spring to become most contemptible in winter; but you, ye lingerers,” he added, looking to a knot of beeches which still bore their withered leaves, “you are the proud plans of adventurous manhood, formed later, and still clinging to the mind of age, although it acknowledges their inanity! None lasts--none endures, save the foliage of the hardy oak, which only begins to show itself when that of the rest of the forest has enjoyed half its existence. A pale and decayed hue is all it possesses, but still it retains that symptom of vitality to the last.--So be it with Father Eustace! The fairy hopes of my youth I have trodden under foot like those neglected rustlers--to the prouder dreams of my manhood I look back as to lofty chimeras, of which the pith and essence have long since faded; but my religious vows, the faithful profession which I have made in my maturer age, shall retain life while aught of Eustace lives. Dangerous it may be--feeble it must be--yet live it shall, the proud determination to serve the Church of which I am a member, and to combat the heresies by which she is assailed.” Thus spoke, at least thus thought, a man zealous according to his imperfect knowledge, confounding the vital interests of Christianity with the extravagant and usurped claims of the Church of Rome, and defending his cause with an ardour worthy of a better.

While moving onward in this contemplative mood, he could not help thinking more than once, that he saw in his path the form of a female dressed in white, who appeared in the attitude of lamentation. But the impression was only momentary, and whenever he looked steadily to the point where he conceived the figure appeared, it always proved that he had mistaken some natural object, a white crag, or the trunk of a decayed birch-tree with its silver bark, for the appearance in question.

Father Eustace had dwelt too long in Rome to partake the superstitious feelings of the more ignorant Scottish clergy; yet he certainly thought it extraordinary, that so strong an impression should have been made on his mind by the legend of the Sacristan. “It is strange,” he said to himself, “that this story, which doubtless was the invention of Brother Philip to cover his own impropriety of conduct, should run so much in my head, and disturb my more serious thoughts--I am wont, I think, to have more command over my senses. I will repeat my prayers, and banish such folly from my recollection.”

The monk accordingly began with devotion to tell his beads, in pursuance of the prescribed rule of his order, and was not again disturbed by any wanderings of the imagination, until he found himself beneath the little fortalice of Glendearg.

Dame Glendinning, who stood at the gate, set up a shout of surprise and joy at seeing the good father. “Martin,” she said, “Jasper, where be a' the folk?--help the right reverend Sub-Prior to dismount, and take his mule from him.--O father! God has sent you in our need--I was just going to send man and horse to the convent, though I ought to be ashamed to give so much trouble to your reverences.”

“Our trouble matters not, good dame,” said Father Eustace; “in what can I pleasure you? I came hither to visit the Lady of Avenel.”

“Well-a-day!” said Dame Alice, “and it was on her part that I had the boldness to think of summoning you, for the good lady will never be able to wear over the day!--Would it please you to go to her chamber?”

“Hath she not been shriven by Father Philip?” said the monk.

“Shriven she was,” said the Dame of Glendearg, “and by Father Philip, as your reverence truly says--but--I wish it may have been a clean shrift--Methought Father Philip looked but moody upon it--and there was a book which he took away with him, that--” She paused as if unwilling to proceed.

“Speak out, Dame Glendinning,” said the Father; “with us it is your duty to have no secrets.”

“Nay, if it please your reverence, it is not that I would keep anything from your reverence's knowledge, but I fear I should prejudice the lady in your opinion; for she is an excellent lady--months and years has she dwelt in this tower, and none more exemplary than she; but this matter, doubtless, she will explain it herself to your reverence.”

“I desire first to know it from you, Dame Glendinning,” said the monk; “and I again repeat, it is your duty to tell it to me.”

“This book, if it please your reverence, which Father Philip removed from Glendearg, was this morning returned to us in a strange manner,” said the good widow.

“Returned!” said the monk; “how mean you?”

“I mean,” answered Dame Glendinning, “that it was brought back to the tower of Glendearg, the saints best know how--that same book which Father Philip carried with him but yesterday. Old Martin, that is my tasker and the lady's servant, was driving out the cows to the pasture--for we have three good milk-cows, reverend father, blessed be Saint Waldave, and thanks to the holy Monastery--”

The monk groaned with impatience; but he remembered that a woman of the good dame's condition was like a top, which, if you let it spin on untouched, must at last come to a pause; but, if you interrupt it by flogging, there is no end to its gyrations. “But, to speak no more of the cows, your reverence, though they are likely cattle as ever were tied to a stake, the tasker was driving them out, and the lads, that is my Halbert and my Edward, that your reverence has seen at church on holidays, and especially Halbert,--for you patted him on the head and gave him a brooch of Saint Cuthbert, which he wears in his bonnet,--and little Mary Avenel, that is the lady's daughter, they ran all after the cattle, and began to play up and down the pasture as young folk will, your reverence. And at length they lost sight of Martin and the cows; and they began to run up a little cleugh which we call _Corri-nan-Shian_, where there is a wee bit stripe of a burn, and they saw there--Good guide us!--a White Woman sitting on the burnside wringing her hands--so the bairns were frighted to see a strange woman sitting there, all but Halbert, who will be sixteen come Whitsuntide; and, besides, he never feared ony thing--and when they went up to her--behold she was passed away!”

“For shame, good woman!” said Father Eustace; “a woman of your sense to listen to a tale so idle!--the young folk told you a lie, and that was all.”

“Nay, sir, it was more than that,” said the old dame; “for, besides that they never told me a lie in their lives, I must warn you that on the very ground where the White Woman was sitting, they found the Lady of Avenel's book, and brought it with them to the tower.”

“That is worthy of mark at least,” said the monk. “Know you no other copy of this volume within these bounds?”

“None, your reverence,” returned Elspeth; “why should there?--no one could read it were there twenty.”

“Then you are sure it is the very same volume which you gave to Father Philip?” said the monk.

“As sure as that I now speak with your reverence.”

“It is most singular!” said the monk; and he walked across the room in a musing posture.

“I have been upon nettles to hear what your reverence would say,” continued Dame Glendinning, “respecting this matter--There is nothing I would not do for the Lady of Avenel and her family, and that has been proved, and for her servants to boot, both Martin and Tibb, although Tibb is not so civil sometimes as altogether I have a right to expect; but I cannot think it beseeming to have angels, or ghosts, or fairies, or the like, waiting upon a leddy when she is in another woman's house, in respect it is no ways creditable. Ony thing she had to do was always done to her hand, without costing her either pains or pence, as a country body says; and besides the discredit, I cannot but think that there is no safety in having such unchancy creatures about ane. But I have tied red thread round the bairns's throats,” (so her fondness still called them,) “and given ilka ane of them a riding-wand of rowan-tree, forby sewing up a slip of witch-elm into their doublets; and I wish to know of your reverence if there be ony thing mair that a lone woman can do in the matter of ghosts and fairies?--Be here! that I should have named their unlucky names twice ower!”

“Dame Glendinning,” answered the monk, somewhat abruptly, when the good woman had finished her narrative, “I pray you, do you know the miller's daughter?”

“Did I know Kate Happer?” replied the widow; “as well as the beggar knows his dish--a canty quean was Kate, and a special cummer of my ain maybe twenty years syne.”

“She cannot be the wench I mean,” said Father Eustace; “she after whom I inquire is scarce fifteen, a black-eyed girl--you may have seen her at the kirk.”

“Your reverence must be in the right; and she is my cummer's nie'ce, doubtless, that you are pleased to speak of: but I thank God I have always been too duteous in attention to the mass, to know whether young wenches have black eyes or green ones.”

The good father had so much of the world about him, that he was unable to avoid smiling, when the dame boasted her absolute resistance to a temptation, which was not quite so liable to beset her as those of the other sex.

“Perhaps, then,” he said, “you know her usual dress, Dame Glendinning?”

“Ay, ay, father,” answered the dame readily enough, “a white kirtle the wench wears, to hide the dust of the mill, no doubt--and a blue hood, that might weel be spared, for pridefulness.”

“Then, may it not be she,” said the father, “who has brought back this book, and stepped out of the way when the children came near her?”

The dame paused--was unwilling to combat the solution suggested by the monk--but was at a loss to conceive why the lass of the mill should come so far from home into so wild a corner merely to leave an old book with three children, from whose observation she wished to conceal herself.

Above all, she could not understand why, since she had acquaintances in the family, and since the Dame Glendinning had always paid her multure and knaveship duly, the said lass of the mill had not come in to rest herself and eat a morsel, and tell her the current news of the water.

These very objections satisfied the monk that his conjectures were right. “Dame,” he said, “you must be cautious in what you say. This is an instance--I would it were the sole one--of the power of the Enemy in these days. The matter must be sifted--with a curious and a careful hand.”

“Indeed,” said Elspeth, trying to catch and chime in with the ideas of the Sub-Prior, “I have often thought the miller's folk at the Monastery-mill were far over careless in sifting our melder, and in bolting it too--some folk say they will not stick at whiles to put in a handful of ashes amongst Christian folk's corn-meal.”

“That shall be looked after also, dame,” said the Sub-Prior, not displeased to see that the good old woman went off on a false scent; “and now, by your leave, I will see this lady--do you go before, and prepare her to see me.”

Dame Glendinning left the lower apartment accordingly, which the monk paced in anxious reflection, considering how he might best discharge, with humanity as well as with effect, the important duty imposed on him. He resolved to approach the bedside of the sick person with reprimands, mitigated only by a feeling for her weak condition--he determined, in case of her reply, to which late examples of hardened heretics might encourage her, to be prepared with answers to the customary scruples. High fraught, also, with zeal against her unauthorized intrusion into the priestly function, by study of the Sacred Scriptures, he imagined to himself the answers which one of the modern school of heresy might return to him--the victorious refutation which should lay the disputant prostrate at the Confessor's mercy--and the healing, yet awful exhortation, which, under pain of refusing the last consolations of religion, he designed to make to the penitent, conjuring her, as she loved her own soul's welfare, to disclose to him what she knew of the dark mystery of iniquity, by which heresies were introduced into the most secluded spots of the very patrimony of the Church herself--what agents they had who could thus glide, as it were unseen, from place to place, bring back the volume which the Church had interdicted to the spots from which it had been removed under her express auspices; and, who, by encouraging the daring and profane thirst after knowledge forbidden and useless to the laity, had encouraged the fisher of souls to use with effect his old bait of ambition and vain-glory.

Much of this premeditated disputation escaped the good father, when Elspeth returned, her tears flowing faster than her apron could dry them, and made him a signal to follow her. “How,” said the monk, “is she then so near her end?--nay, the Church must not break or bruise, when comfort is yet possible;” and forgetting his polemics, the good Sub-Prior hastened to the little apartment, where, on the wretched bed which she had occupied since her misfortunes had driven her to the Tower of Glendearg, the widow of Walter Avenel had rendered up her spirit to her Creator. “My God!” said the Sub-Prior, “and has my unfortunate dallying suffered her to depart without the Church's consolation! Look to her, dame,” he exclaimed, with eager impatience; “is there not yet a sparkle of the life left?--may she not be recalled--recalled but for a moment?--Oh! would that she could express, but by the most imperfect word--but by the most feeble motion, her acquiescence in the needful task of penitential prayer!--Does she not breathe?--Art thou sure she doth not?”

“She will never breathe more,” said the matron. “Oh! the poor fatherless girl--now motherless also--Oh, the kind companion I have had these many years, whom I shall never see again! But she is in heaven for certain, if ever woman went there; for a woman of better life----”

“Wo to me,” said the good monk, “if indeed she went not hence in good assurance--wo to the reckless shepherd, who suffered the wolf to carry a choice one from the flock, while he busied himself with trimming his sling and his staff to give the monster battle! Oh! if in the long Hereafter, aught but weal should that poor spirit share, what has my delay cost?--the value of an immortal soul!”

He then approached the body, full of the deep remorse natural to a good man of his persuasion, who devoutly believed the doctrines of the Catholic Church. “Ay,” said he, gazing on the pallid corpse, from which the spirit had parted so placidly as to leave a smile upon the thin blue lips, which had been so long wasted by decay that they had parted with the last breath of animation without the slightest convulsive tremor--“Ay,” said Father Eustace, “there lies the faded tree, and, as it fell, so it lies--awful thought for me, should my neglect have left it to descend in an evil direction!” He then again and again conjured Dame Glendinning to tell him what she knew of the demeanour and ordinary walk of the deceased.

All tended to the high honour of the deceased lady; for her companion, who admired her sufficiently while alive, notwithstanding some trifling points of jealousy, now idolized her after her death, and could think of no attribute of praise with which she did not adorn her memory.

Indeed, the Lady of Avenel, however she might privately doubt some of the doctrines announced by the Church of Rome, and although she had probably tacitly appealed from that corrupted system of Christianity to the volume on which Christianity itself is founded, had nevertheless been regular in her attendance on the worship of the Church, not, perhaps, extending her scruples so far as to break off communion. Such indeed was the first sentiment of the earlier reformers, who seemed to have studied, for a time at least, to avoid a schism, until the violence of the Pope rendered it inevitable.

Father Eustace, on the present occasion, listened with eagerness to everything which could lead to assure him of the lady's orthodoxy in the main points of belief; for his conscience reproached him sorely, that, instead of protracting conversation with the Dame of Glendearg, he had not instantly hastened where his presence was so necessary. “If,” he said, addressing the dead body, “thou art yet free from the utmost penalty due to the followers of false doctrine--if thou dost but suffer for a time, to expiate faults done in the body, but partaking of mortal frailty more than of deadly sin, fear not that thy abode shall be long in the penal regions to which thou mayest be doomed--if vigils--if masses--if penance--if maceration of my body, till it resembles that extenuated form which the soul hath abandoned, may assure thy deliverance. The Holy Church--the godly foundation--our blessed Patroness herself, shall intercede for one whose errors were counter-balanced by so many virtues.--Leave me, dame--here, and by her bed-side, will I perform those duties--which this piteous case demands!”

Elspeth left the monk, who employed himself in fervent and sincere, though erroneous prayers, for the weal of the departed spirit. For an hour he remained in the apartment of death, and then returned to the hall, where he found the still weeping friend of the deceased.

But it would be injustice to Mrs. Glendinning's hospitality, if we suppose her to have been weeping during this long interval, or rather if we suppose her so entirely absorbed by the tribute of sorrow which she paid frankly and plentifully to her deceased friend, as to be incapable of attending to the rights of hospitality due to the holy visitor--who was confessor at once, and Sub-Prior--mighty in all religious and secular considerations, so far as the vassals of the Monastery were interested.

Her barley-bread had been toasted--her choicest cask of home-brewed ale had been broached--her best butter had been placed on the hall-table, along with her most savoury ham, and her choicest cheese, ere she abandoned herself to the extremity of sorrow; and it was not till she had arranged her little repast neatly on the board, that she sat down in the chimney corner, threw her checked apron over her head, and gave way to the current of tears and sobs. In this there was no grimace or affectation. The good dame held the honours of her house to be as essential a duty, especially when a monk was her visitant, as any other pressing call upon her conscience; nor until these were suitably attended to did she find herself at liberty to indulge her sorrow for her departed friend.

When she was conscious of the Sub-Prior's presence, she rose with the same attention to his reception; but he declined all the offers of hospitality with which she endeavoured to tempt him. Not her butter, as yellow as gold, and the best, she assured him, that was made in the patrimony of St. Mary--not the barley scones, which “the departed saint, God sain her! used to say were so good”--not the ale, nor any other cates which poor Elspeth's stores afforded, could prevail on the Sub-Prior to break his fast. “This day,” he said, “I must not taste food until the sun go down, happy if, in so doing, I can expiate my own negligence--happier still, if my sufferings of this trifling nature, undertaken in pure faith and singleness of heart, may benefit the soul of the deceased. Yet, dame,” he added, “I may not so far forget the living in my cares for the dead, as to leave behind me that book, which is to the ignorant what, to our first parents, the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil unhappily proved-excellent indeed in itself, but fatal because used by those to whom it is prohibited.”

“Oh, blithely, reverend father,” said the widow of Simon Glendinning, “will I give you the book, if so be I can while it from the bairns; and indeed, poor things, as the case stands with them even now, you might take the heart out of their bodies, and they never find it out, they are sae begrutten.” [Footnote: _Begrutten_--over-weeped]

“Give them this missal instead, good dame,” said the father, drawing from his pocket one which was curiously illuminated with paintings, “and I will come myself, or send one at a fitting time, and teach them the meaning of these pictures.”

“The bonny images!” said Dame Glendinning, forgetting for an instant her grief in her admiration, “and weel I wot,” added she, “it is another sort of a book than the poor Lady of Avenel's; and blessed might we have been this day, if your reverence had found the way up the glen, instead of Father Philip, though the Sacristan is a powerful man too, and speaks as if he would ger the house fly abroad, save that the walls are gey thick. Simon's forebears (may he and they be blessed!) took care of that.”

The monk ordered his mule, and was about to take his leave; and the good dame was still delaying him with questions about the funeral, when a horseman, armed and accoutred, rode into the little court-yard which surrounded the Keep.

Chapter the Ninth.

For since they rode among our doors With splent on spauld and rusty spurs, There grows no fruit into our furs; Thus said John Up-on-land. DANNATYNE MS.

The Scottish laws, which were as wisely and judiciously made as they were carelessly and ineffectually executed, had in vain endeavoured to restrain the damage done to agriculture, by the chiefs and landed proprietors retaining in their service what were called jack-men, from the _jack_, or doublet, quilted with iron which they wore as defensive armour. These military retainers conducted themselves with great insolence towards the industrious part of the community--lived in a great measure by plunder, and were ready to execute any commands of their master, however unlawful. In adopting this mode of life, men resigned the quiet hopes and regular labours of industry, for an unsettled, precarious, and dangerous trade, which yet had such charms for those once accustomed to it, that they became incapable of following any other. Hence the complaint of John Upland, a fictitious character, representing a countryman, into whose mouth the poets of the day put their general satires upon men and manners.

They ride about in such a rage, By forest, frith, and field, With buckler, bow, and brand. Lo! where they ride out through the rye! The Devil mot save the company, Quoth John Up-on-land.

Christie of the Clinthill, the horseman who now arrived at the little Tower of Glendearg, was one of the hopeful company of whom the poet complains, as was indicated by his “splent on spauld,” (iron-plates on his shoulder,) his rusted spurs, and his long lance. An iron skull-cap, none of the brightest, bore for distinction a sprig of the holly, which was Avenel's badge. A long two-edged straight sword, having a handle made of polished oak, hung down by his side. The meagre condition of his horse, and the wild and emaciated look of the rider, showed their occupation could not be accounted an easy or a thriving one. He saluted Dame Glendinning with little courtesy, and the monk with less; for the growing, disrespect to the religious orders had not failed to extend itself among a class of men of such disorderly habits, although it may be supposed they were tolerably indifferent alike to the new or the ancient doctrines.

“So, our lady is dead, Dame Glendinning?” said the jack-man; “my master has sent you even now a fat bullock for her mart--it may serve for her funeral. I have left him in the upper cleugh, as he is somewhat kenspeckle, [Footnote: _Kenspeckle_--that which is easily recognized by the eye.] and is marked both with cut and birn--the sooner the skin is off, and he is in saultfat, the less like you are to have trouble--you understand me? Let me have a peck of corn for my horse, and beef and beer for myself, for I must go on to the Monastery--though I think this monk hero might do mine errand.”

“Thine errand, rude man!” said the Sub-Prior, knitting his brows--

“For God's sake” cried poor Dame Glendinning, terrified at the idea of a quarrel between them,--“O Christie!---it is the Sub-Prior--O reverend sir, it is Christie of the Clinthill, the laird's chief jack-man; ye know that little havings can be expected from the like o' them.”

“Are you a retainer of the Laird of Avenel?” said the monk, addressing himself to the horseman, “and do you speak thus rudely to a Brother of Saint Mary's, to whom thy master is so much beholden?”

“He means to be yet more beholden to your house, Sir Monk,” answered the fellow; “for hearing his sister-in-law, the widow of Walter of Avenel, was on her death-bed, he sent me to say to the Father Abbot and the brethren, that he will hold the funeral-feast at their convent, and invites himself thereto, with a score of horse and some friends, and to abide there for three days and three nights,--having horse-meat and men's-meat at the charge of the community; of which his intention he sends due notice, that fitting preparation may be timeously made.”

“Friend,” said the Sub-Prior, “believe not that I will do to the Father Abbot the indignity of delivering such an errand.--Think'st thou the goods of the church were bestowed upon her by holy princes and pious nobles, now dead and gone, to be consumed in revelry by every profligate layman who numbers in his train more followers than he can support by honest means, or by his own incomings? Tell thy master, from the Sub-Prior of Saint Mary's, that the Primate hath issued his commands to us that we submit no longer to this compulsory exaction of hospitality on slight or false pretences. Our lands and goods were given to relieve pilgrims and pious persons, not to feast bands of rude soldiers.”

“This to me!” said the angry spearman, “this to me and to my master--Look to yourself then, Sir Priest, and try if _Ave_ and _Credo_ will keep bullocks from wandering, and hay-stacks from burning.”

“Dost thou menace the Holy Church's patrimony with waste and fire-raising,” said the Sub-Prior, “and that in the face of the sun? I call on all who hear me to bear witness to the words this ruffian has spoken. Remember how the Lord James drowned such as you by scores in the black pool at Jeddart.-To him and to the Primate will I complain.” The soldier shifted the position of his lance, and brought it down to a level with the monk's body.

Dame Glendinning began to shriek for assistance. “Tibb Tacket! Martin! where be ye all?--Christie, for the love of God, consider he is a man of Holy Kirk!”

“I care not for his spear,” said the Sub-Prior; “if I am slain in defending the rights and privileges of my community, the Primate will know how to take vengeance.”

“Let him look to himself,” said Christie, but at the same time depositing his lance against the wall of the tower; “if the Fife men spoke true who came hither with the Governor in the last raid, Norman Leslie has him at feud, and is like to set him hard. We know Norman a true bloodhound, who will never quit the slot. But I had no design to offend the holy father,” he added, thinking perhaps he had gone a little too far; “I am a rude man, bred to lance and stirrup, and not used to deal with book-learned men and priests; and I am willing to ask his forgiveness--and his blessing, if I have said aught amiss.”

“For God's sake! your reverence,” said the widow of Glendearg apart to the Sub-Prior, “bestow on him your forgiveness--how shall we poor folk sleep in security in the dark nights, if the convent is at feud with such men as he is?”

“You are right, dame,” said the Sub-Prior, “your safety should, and must be, in the first instance consulted.--Soldier, I forgive thee, and may God bless thee and send thee honesty.”

Christie of the Clinthill made an unwilling inclination with his head, and muttered apart, “that is as much as to say, God send thee starvation, But now to my master's demand, Sir Priest? What answer am I to return?”

“That the body of the widow of Walter of Avenel,” answered the Father, “shall be interred as becomes her rank, and in the tomb of her valiant husband. For your master's proffered visit of three days, with such a company and retinue, I have no authority to reply to it; you must intimate your Chief's purpose to the Reverend Lord Abbot.”

“That will cost me a farther ride,” said the man, “but it is all in the day's work.--How now, my lad,” said he to Halbert, who was handling the long lance which he had laid aside; “how do you like such a plaything?--will you go with me and be a moss-trooper?”

“The Saints in their mercy forbid!” said the poor mother; and then, afraid of having displeased Christie by the vivacity of her exclamation, she followed it up by explaining, that since Simon's death she could not look on a spear or a bow, or any implement of destruction without trembling.

“Pshaw!” answered Christie, “thou shouldst take another husband, dame, and drive such follies out of thy thoughts--what sayst thou to such a strapping lad as I? Why, this old tower of thine is fensible enough, and there is no want of clenchs, and crags, and bogs, and thickets, if one was set hard; a man might bide here and keep his half-score of lads, and as many geldings, and live on what he could lay his hand on, and be kind to thee, old wench.”

“Alas! Master Christie,” said the matron, “that you should talk to a lone woman in such a fashion, and death in the house besides!”

“Lone woman!--why, that is the very reason thou shouldst take a mate. Thy old friend is dead, why, good--choose thou another of somewhat tougher frame, and that will not die of the pip like a young chicken.--Better still--Come, dame, let me have something to eat, and we will talk more of this.”

Dame Elspeth, though she well knew the character of the man, whom in fact she both disliked and feared, could not help simpering at the personal address which he thought proper to make to her. She whispered to the Sub-Prior, “ony thing just to keep him quiet,” and went into the tower to set before the soldier the food he desired, trusting betwixt good cheer and the power of her own charms, to keep Christie of the Clinthill so well amused, that the altercation betwixt him and the holy father should not be renewed.

The Sub-Prior was equally unwilling to hazard any unnecessary rupture between the community and such a person as Julian of Avenel. He was sensible that moderation, as well as firmness, was necessary to support the tottering cause of the Church of Rome; and that, contrary to former times, the quarrels betwixt the clergy and laity had, in the present, usually terminated to the advantage of the latter. He resolved, therefore, to avoid farther strife by withdrawing, but failed not, in the first place, to possess himself of the volume which the Sacristan carried off the evening before, and which had been returned to the glen in such a marvellous manner.

Edward, the younger of Dame Elspeth's boys, made great objections to the book's being removed, in which Mary would probably have joined, but that she was now in her little sleeping-chamber with Tibb, who was exerting her simple skill to console the young lady for her mother's death. But the younger Glendinning stood up in defence of her property, and, with a positiveness which had hitherto made no part of his character, declared, that now the kind lady was dead, the book was Mary's, and no one but Mary should have it.

“But if it is not a fit book for Mary to read, my dear boy,” said the father, gently, “you would not wish it to remain with her?”

“The lady read it,” answered the young champion of property; “and so it could not be wrong--it shall not be taken away.--I wonder where Halbert is?--listening to the bravading tales of gay Christie, I reckon,--he is always wishing for fighting, and now he is out of the way.”

“Why, Edward, you would not fight with me, who am both a priest and old man?”

“If you were as good a priest as the Pope,” said the boy, “and as old as the hills to boot, you shall not carry away Mary's book without her leave. I will do battle for it.”

“But see you, my love,” said the monk, amused with the resolute friendship manifested by the boy, “I do not take it; I only borrow it; and I leave in its place my own gay missal, as a pledge I will bring it again.”

Edward opened the missal with eager curiosity, and glanced at the pictures with which it was illustrated. “Saint George and the dragon--Halbert will like that; and Saint Michael brandishing his sword over the head of the Wicked One--and that will do for Halbert too. And see the Saint John leading his lamb in the wilderness, with his little cross made of reeds, and his scrip and staff--that shall be my favourite; and where shall we find one for poor Mary?--here is a beautiful woman weeping and lamenting herself.”

“This is Saint Mary Magdalen repenting of her sins, my dear boy,” said the father.

“That will not suit _our_ Mary; for she commits no faults, and is never angry with us, but when we do something wrong.”

“Then,” said the father, “I will show you a Mary, who will protect her and you, and all good children. See how fairly she is represented, with her gown covered with golden stars.”

The boy was lost in wonder at the portrait of the Virgin, which the Sub-Prior turned up to him.

“This,” he said, “is really like our sweet Mary; and I think I will let you take away the black book, that has no such goodly shows in it, and leave this for Mary instead. But you must promise to bring back the book, good father--for now I think upon it, Mary may like that best which was her mother's.”

“I will certainly return,” said the monk, evading his answer, “and perhaps I may teach you to write and read such beautiful letters as you see there written, and to paint them blue, green, and yellow, and to blazon them with gold.”

“Ay, and to make such figures as these blessed Saints, and especially these two Marys?” said the boy.

“With their blessing,” said the Sub-Prior, “I can teach you that art too, so far as I am myself capable of showing, and you of learning it.” “Then,” said Edward, “will I paint Mary's picture--and remember you are to bring back the black book; that you must promise me.”

The Sub-Prior, anxious to get rid of the boy's pertinacity, and to set forward on his return to the convent, without having any further interview with Christie the galloper, answered by giving the promise Edward required, mounted his mule, and set forth on his return homeward.

The November day was well spent ere the Sub-Prior resumed his journey; for the difficulty of the road, and the various delays which he had met with at the tower, had detained him longer than he proposed. A chill easterly wind was sighing among the withered leaves, and stripping them from the hold they had yet retained on the parent trees.

“Even so,” said the monk, “our prospects in this vale of time grow more disconsolate as the stream of years passes on. Little have I gained by my journey, saving the certainty that heresy is busy among us with more than his usual activity, and that the spirit of insulting religious orders, and plundering the Church's property, so general in the eastern districts of Scotland, has now come nearer home.”

The tread of a horse which came up behind him, interrupted his reverie, and he soon saw he was mounted by the same wild rider whom he had left at the tower.

“Good even, my son, and benedicite,” said the Sub-Prior as he passed; but the rude soldier scarce acknowledged the greeting, by bending his head; and dashing the spurs into his horse, went on at a pace which soon left the monk and his mule far behind. And there, thought the Sub-Prior, goes another plague of the times--a fellow whose birth designed him to cultivate the earth, but who is perverted by the unhallowed and unchristian divisions of the country, into a daring and dissolute robber. The barons of Scotland are now turned masterful thieves and ruffians, oppressing the poor by violence, and wasting the Church, by extorting free-quarters from abbeys and priories, without either shame or reason. I fear me I shall be too late to counsel the Abbot to make a stand against these daring _sorners_ [Footnote: To _sorne_, in Scotland, is to exact free quarters against the will of the landlord. It is declared equivalent to theft, by a statute passed in the year 1445. The great chieftains oppressed the monasteries very much by exactions of this nature. The community of Aberbrothwick complained of an Earl of Angus, I think, who was in the regular habit of visiting them once a year, with a train of a thousand horse, and abiding till the whole winter provisions of the convent were exhausted.]--“I must make haste.” He struck his mule with his riding wand accordingly; but, instead of mending her pace, the animal suddenly started from the path, and the rider's utmost efforts could not force her forward.

“Art thou, too, infected with the spirit of the times?” said the Sub-Prior; “thou wert wont to be ready and serviceable, and art now as restive as any wild jack-man or stubborn heretic of them all.”

While he was contending with the startled animal, a voice, like that of a female, chanted in his ear, or at least very close to it,

“Good evening-. Sir Priest, and so late as you ride, With your mule so fair, and your mantle so wide; But ride you through valley, or ride you o'er hill. There is one that has warrant to wait on you still. Back, back, The volume black! I have a warrant to carry it back.”

The Sub-Prior looked around, but neither bush nor brake was near which could conceal an ambushed songstress. “May Our Lady have mercy on me!” he said; “I trust my senses have not forsaken me--yet how my thoughts should arrange themselves into rhymes which I despise, and music which I care not for, or why there should be the sound of a female voice in ears, in which its melody has been so long indifferent, baffles my comprehension, and almost realizes the vision of Philip the Sacristan. Come, good mule, betake thee to the path, and let us hence while our judgment serves us.”

But the mule stood as if it had been rooted to the spot, backed from the point to which it was pressed by its rider, and by her ears laid close into her neck, and her eyes almost starting from their sockets, testified that she was under great terror.

While the Sub-Prior, by alternate threats and soothing, endeavoured to reclaim the wayward animal to her duty, the wild musical voice was again heard close beside him.

“What, ho! Sub-Prior, and came you but here To conjure a book from a dead woman's bier? Sain you, and save you, be wary and wise, Ride back with the book, or you'll pay for your prize. Back, back. There's death in the track! In the name of my master I bid thee bear back.”

“In the name of MY Master,” said the astonished monk, “that name before which all things created tremble, I conjure thee to say what thou art that hauntest me thus?”

The same voice replied,

“That which is neither ill nor well. That which belongs not to Heaven nor to hell, A wreath of the mist, a bubble of the stream, 'Twixt a waking thought and a sleeping dream; A form that men spy With the half-shut eye. In the beams of the setting sun, am I.”

“This is more than simple fantasy,” said the Sub-Prior, rousing himself; though, notwithstanding the natural hardihood of his temper, the sensible presence of a supernatural being so near him, failed not to make his blood run cold, and his hair bristle. “I charge thee,” he said aloud, “be thine errand what it will, to depart and trouble me no more! False spirit, thou canst not appal any save those who do the work negligently.” The voice immediately answered:

“Vainly, Sir Prior, wouldst thou bar me my right! Like the star when it shoots, I can dart through the night; I can dance on the torrent and ride on the air, And travel the world with the bonny night-mare. Again, again, At the crook of the glen, Where bickers the burnie, I'll meet thee again.”

The road was now apparently left open; for the mule collected herself, and changed from her posture of terror to one which promised advance, although a profuse perspiration, and general trembling of the joints, indicated the bodily terror she had undergone.

“I used to doubt the existence of Cabalists and Rosicrucians,” thought the Sub-Prior, “but, by my Holy Order, I know no longer what to say!--My pulse beats temperately--my hand is cool--I am fasting from everything but sin, and possessed of my ordinary faculties--Either some fiend is permitted to bewilder me, or the tales of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and others who treat of occult philosophy, are not without foundation.--At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me.”

He moved around accordingly, but with precaution, and not without fear; for he neither knew the manner in which, or the place where his journey might be next interrupted by his invisible attendant. He descended the glen without interruption for about a mile farther, when, just at the spot where the brook approached the steep hill, with a winding so abrupt as to leave scarcely room for a horse to pass, the mule was again visited with the same symptoms of terror which had before interrupted her course. Better acquainted than before with the cause of her restiveness, the Priest employed no effort to make her proceed, but addressed himself to the object, which he doubted not was the same that had formerly interrupted him, in the words of solemn exorcism prescribed by the Church of Rome on such occasions.

In reply to his demand, the voice again sung;--

“Men of good are bold as sackless,[Footnote: Sackless--Innocent.] Men of rude are wild and reckless, Lie thou still In the nook of the hill. For those be before thee that wish thee ill.”

While the Sub-Prior listened, with his head turned in the direction from which the sounds seemed to come, he felt as if something rushed against him; and ere he could discover the cause, he was pushed from his saddle with gentle but irresistible force. Before he reached the ground his senses were gone, and he lay long in a state of insensibility; for the sunset had not ceased to gild the top of the distant hill when he fell,--and when he again became conscious of existence, the pale moon was gleaming on the landscape. He awakened in a state of terror, from which, for a few minutes, he found it difficult to shake himself free. At length he sate upon the grass, and became sensible, by repeated exertion, that the only personal injury which he had sustained was the numbness arising from extreme cold. The motion of something near him made the blood again run to his heart, and by a sudden effort he started up, and, looking around, saw to his relief that the noise was occasioned by the footsteps of his own mule. The peaceable animal had remained quietly beside her master during his trance, browsing on the grass which grew plentifully in that sequestered nook.

With some exertion he collected himself, remounted the animal, and meditating upon his wild adventure, descended the glen till its junction with the broader valley through which the Tweed winds. The drawbridge was readily dropped at his first summons; and so much had he won upon the heart of the churlish warden, that Peter appeared himself with a lantern to show the Sub-Prior his way over the perilous pass.

“By my sooth, sir,” he said, holding the light up to Father Eustace's face, “you look sorely travelled and deadly pale--but a little matter serves to weary out you men of the cell. I now who speak to you--I have ridden--before I was perched up here on this pillar betwixt wind and water--it may be thirty Scots miles before I broke my fast, and have had the red of a bramble rose in my cheek all the while--But will you taste some food, or a cup of distilled waters?”

“I may not,” said Father Eustace, “being under a vow; but I thank you for your kindness, and pray you to give what I may not accept to the next poor pilgrim who comes hither pale and fainting, for so it shall be the better both with him here, and with you hereafter.”

“By my faith, and I will do so,” said Peter Bridge-Ward, “even for thy sake--It is strange now, how this Sub-Prior gets round one's heart more than the rest of these cowled gentry, that think of nothing but quaffing and stuffing!--Wife, I say--wife, we will give a cup of distilled waters and a crust of bread unto the next pilgrim that comes over; and ye may keep for [Footnote: An old-fashioned name for an earthen jar for holding spirits.] the purpose the grunds of the last greybeard, and the ill-baked bannock which the bairns couldna eat.”

While Peter issued these charitable, and, at the same time, prudent injunctions, the Sub-Prior, whose mild interference had awakened the Bridge-Ward to such an act of unwonted generosity, was pacing onward to the Monastery. In the way, he had to commune with and subdue his own rebellious heart, an enemy, he was sensible, more formidable than any which the external powers of Satan could place in his way.

Father Eustace had indeed strong temptation to suppress the extraordinary incident which had befallen him, which he was the more reluctant to confess, because he had passed so severe a judgment upon Father Philip, who, as he was not unwilling to allow, had, on his return from Glendearg, encountered obstacles somewhat similar to his own. Of this the Sub-Prior was the more convinced, when, feeling in his bosom for the Book which he had brought off from the Tower of Glendearg, he found it was amissing, which he could only account for by supposing it had been stolen from him during his trance.

“If I confess this strange visitation,” thought the Sub-Prior, “I become the ridicule of all my brethren--I whom the Primate sent hither to be a watch, as it were, and a check upon their follies. I give the Abbot an advantage over me which I shall never again recover, and Heaven only knows how he may abuse it, in his foolish simplicity, to the dishonour and loss of Holy Kirk.--But then, if I make not true confession of my shame, with what face can I again presume to admonish or restrain others?--Avow, proud heart,” continued he, addressing himself, “that the weal of Holy Church interests thee less in this matter than thine own humiliation--Yes, Heaven has punished thee even in that point in which thou didst deem thyself most strong, in thy spiritual pride and thy carnal wisdom. Thou hast laughed at and derided the inexperience of thy brethren--stoop thyself in turn to their derision--tell what they may not believe--affirm that which they will ascribe to idle fear, or perhaps to idle falsehood--sustain the disgrace of a silly visionary, or a wilful deceiver.--Be it so, I will do my duty, and make ample confession to my Superior. If the discharge of this duty destroys my usefulness in this house, God and Our Lady will send me where I can better serve them.”

There was no little merit in the resolution thus piously and generously formed by Father Eustace. To men of any rank the esteem of their order is naturally most dear; but in the monastic establishment, cut off, as the brethren are, from other objects of ambition, as well as from all exterior friendship and relationship, the place which they hold in the opinion of each other is all in all.

But the consciousness how much he should rejoice the Abbot and most of the other monks of Saint Mary's, who were impatient of the unauthorized, yet irresistible control, which he was wont to exercise in the affairs of the convent, by a confession which would put him in a ludicrous, or perhaps even in a criminal point of view, could not weigh with Father Eustace in comparison with the task which his belief enjoined.

As, strong in his feelings of duty, he approached the exterior gate of the Monastery, he was surprised to see torches gleaming, and men assembled around it, some on horseback, some on foot, while several of the monks, distinguished through the night by their white scapularies, were making themselves busy among the crowd. The Sub-Prior was received with a unanimous shout of joy, which at once made him sensible that he had himself been the object of their anxiety.

“There he is! there he is! God be thanked--there he is, hale and fear!” exclaimed the vassals; while the monks exclaimed, “_Te Deum laudamus_--the blood of thy servants is precious in thy sight!”

“What is the matter, children? what is the matter, my brethren?” said Father Eustace, dismounting at the gate.

“Nay, brother, if thou know'st not, we will not tell thee till thou art in the refectory,” answered the monks; “suffice it that the Lord Abbot had ordered these, our zealous and faithful vassals, instantly to set forth to guard thee from imminent peril--Ye may ungirth your horses, children, and dismiss; and to-morrow, each who was at this rendezvous may send to the convent kitchen for a quarter of a yard of roast beef, and a black-jack full of double ale.” [Footnote: It was one of the few reminiscences of Old Parr, or Henry Jenkins, I forget which, that, at some convent in the veteran's neighbourhood, the community, before the dissolution, used to dole out roast-beef in the measure of feet and yards.]

The vassals dispersed with joyful acclamation, and the monks, with equal jubilee, conducted the Sub-Prior into the refectory.

Chapter the Tenth.

Here we stand-- Woundless and well, may Heaven's high name be bless'd for't! As erst, ere treason couch'd a lance against us. Decker.

No sooner was the Sub-Prior hurried into the refectory by his rejoicing companions, than the first person on whom he fixed his eye proved to be Christie of the Clinthill. He was seated in the chimney-corner, fettered and guarded, his features drawn into that air of sulky and turbid resolution with which those hardened in guilt are accustomed to view the approach of punishment. But as the Sub-Prior drew near to him, his face assumed a more wild and startled expression, while he exclaimed--“The devil! the devil himself, brings the dead back upon the living.”

“Nay,” said a monk to him, “say rather that Our Lady foils the attempts of the wicked on her faithful servants--our dear brother lives and moves.”

“Lives and moves!” said the ruffian, rising and shuffling towards the Sub-Prior as well as his chains would permit; “nay, then, I will never trust ashen shaft and steel point more--It is even so,” he added, as he gazed on the Sub-Prior with astonishment; “neither wem nor wound--not as much as a rent in his frock!”

“And whence should my wound have come?” said Father Eustace.

“From the good lance that never failed me before,” replied Christie of the Clinthill.

“Heaven absolve thee for thy purpose!” said the Sub-Prior; “wouldst thou have slain a servant of the altar?”

“To choose!” answered Christie; “the Fifemen say, an the whole pack of ye were slain, there were more lost at Flodden.”

“Villain! art thou heretic as well as murderer?”

“Not I, by Saint Giles,” replied the rider; “I listened blithely enough to the Laird of Monance, when he told me ye were all cheats and knaves; but when he would have had me go hear one Wiseheart, a gospeller as they call him, he might as well have persuaded the wild colt that had flung one rider to kneel down and help another into the saddle.”

“There is some goodness about him yet,” said the Sacristan to the Abbot, who at that moment entered--“He refused to hear a heretic preacher.”

“The better for him in the next world,” answered the Abbot. “Prepare for death, my son,--we deliver thee over to the secular arm of our bailie, for execution on the Gallow-hill by peep of light.”

“Amen!” said the ruffian; “'tis the end I must have come by sooner or later--and what care I whether I feed the crows at Saint Mary's or at Carlisle?”

“Let me implore your reverend patience for an instant,” said the Sub-Prior; “until I shall inquire--”

“What!” exclaimed the Abbot, observing him for the first time--“Our dear brother restored to us when his life was unhoped for!--nay, kneel not to a sinner like me--stand up--thou hast my blessing. When this villain came to the gate, accused by his own evil conscience, and crying out he had murdered thee, I thought that the pillar of our main aisle had fallen--no more shall a life so precious be exposed to such risks as occur in this border country; no longer shall one beloved and rescued of Heaven hold so low a station in the church as that of a poor Sub-Prior--I will write by express to the Primate for thy speedy removal and advancement.”

“Nay, but let me understand,” said the Sub-Prior; “did this soldier say he had slain me?”

“That he had transfixed you,” answered the Abbot, “in full career with his lance--but it seems he had taken an indifferent aim. But no sooner didst thou fall to the ground mortally gored, as he deemed, with his weapon, than our blessed Patroness appeared to him, as he averred--”

“I averred no such thing,” said the prisoner; “I said a woman in white interrupted me, as I was about to examine the priest's cassock, for they are usually well lined--she had a bulrush in her hand, with one touch of which she struck me from my horse, as I might strike down a child of four years old with an iron mace--and then, like a singing fiend as she was, she sung to me.

'Thank the holly-bush That nods on thy brow; Or with this slender rush I had strangled thee now.'

I gathered myself up with fear and difficulty, threw myself on my horse, and came hither like a fool to get myself hanged for a rogue.”

“Thou seest, honoured brother,” said the Abbot to the Sub-Prior, “in what favour thou art with our blessed Patroness, that she herself becomes the guardian of thy paths--Not since the days of our blessed founder hath she shown such grace to any one. All unworthy were we to hold spiritual superiority over thee, and we pray thee to prepare for thy speedy removal to Aberbrothwick.”

“Alas! my lord and father,” said the Sub-Prior, “your words pierce my very soul. Under the seal of confession will I presently tell thee why I conceive myself rather the baffled sport of a spirit of another sort, than the protected favourite of the heavenly powers. But first let me ask this unhappy man a question or two.”

“Do as ye list,” replied the Abbot--“but you shall not convince me that it is fitting you remain in this inferior office in the convent of Saint Mary.”

“I would ask of this poor man,” said Father Eustace, “for what purpose he nourished the thought of putting to death one who never did him evil?”

“Ay! but thou didst menace me with evil,” said the ruffian, “and no one but a fool is menaced twice. Dost thou not remember what you said touching the Primate and Lord James, and the black pool of Jedwood? Didst thou think me fool enough to wait till thou hadst betrayed me to the sack and the fork! There were small wisdom in that, methinks--as little as in coming hither to tell my own misdeeds--I think the devil was in me when I took this road--I might have remembered the proverb, 'Never Friar forgot feud.'”

“And it was solely for that--for that only hasty word of mine, uttered in a moment of impatience, and forgotten ere it was well spoken?” said Father Eustace.

“Ay! for that, and--for the love of thy gold crucifix,” said Christie of the Clinthill.

“Gracious Heaven! and could the yellow metal--the glittering earth--so far overcome every sense of what is thereby represented?--Father Abbot, I pray, as a dear boon, you will deliver this guilty person to my mercy.”

“Nay, brother,” interposed the Sacristan, “to your doom, if you will, not to your mercy--Remember, we are not all equally favoured by our blessed Lady, nor is it likely that every frock in the Convent will serve as a coat of proof when a lance is couched against it.”

“For that very reason,” said the Sub-Prior, “I would not that for my worthless self the community were to fall at feud with Julian of Avenel, this man's master.”

“Our Lady forbid!” said the Sacristan, “he is a second Julian the Apostate.”

“With our reverend father the Abbot's permission, then,” said Father Eustace, “I desire this man be freed from his chains, and suffered to depart uninjured;--and here, friend,” he added, giving him the golden crucifix, “is the image for which thou wert willing to stain thy hands with murder. View it well, and may it inspire thee with other and better thoughts than those which referred to it as a piece of bullion! Part with it, nevertheless, if thy necessities require, and get thee one of such coarse substance that Mammon shall have no share in any of the reflections to which it gives rise. It was the bequest of a dear friend to me; but dearer service can it never do than that of winning a soul to Heaven.”

The Borderer, now freed from his chains, stood gazing alternately on the Sub-Prior, and on the golden crucifix. “By Saint Giles,” said he, “I understand ye not!--An ye give me gold for couching my lance at thee, what would you give me to level it at a heretic?”

“The Church,” said the Sub-Prior, “will try the effect of her spiritual censures to bring these stray sheep into the fold, ere she employ the edge of the sword of Saint Peter.”

“Ay, but,” said the ruffian, “they say the Primate recommends a little strangling and burning in aid of both censure and of sword. But fare ye weel, I owe you a life, and it may be I will not forget my debt.”

The bailie now came bustling in, dressed in his blue coat and bandaliers, and attended by two or three halberdiers. “I have been a thought too late in waiting upon your reverend lordship. I am grown somewhat fatter since the field of Pinkie, and my leathern coat slips not on so soon as it was wont; but the dungeon is ready, and though, as I said, I have been somewhat late--”

Here his intended prisoner walked gravely up to the officer's nose, to his great amazement.

“You have been indeed somewhat late, bailie,” said he, “and I am greatly obligated to your buff-coat, and to the time you took to put it on. If the secular arm had arrived some quarter of an hour sooner, I had been out of the reach of spiritual grace; but as it is, I wish you good even, and a safe riddance out of your garment of durance, in which you have much the air of a hog in armour.”

Wroth was the bailie at this comparison, and exclaimed in ire--“An it were not for the presence of the venerable Lord Abbot, thou knave--”

“Nay, an thou wouldst try conclusions,” said Christie of the Clinthill, “I will meet thee at day-break by Saint Mary's Well.”

“Hardened wretch!” said Father Eustace, “art thou but this instant delivered from death, and dost thou so soon morse thoughts of slaughter?”

“I will meet with thee ere it be long, thou knave,” said the bailie, “and teach thee thine Oremus.”

“I will meet thy cattle in a moonlight night before that day,” said he of the Clinthill.

“I will have thee by the neck one misty morning, thou strong thief,” answered the secular officer of the Church.

“Thou art thyself as strong a thief as ever rode,” retorted Christie; “and if the worms were once feasting on that fat carcass of thine I might well hope to have thine office, by favour of these reverend men.”

“A cast of their office, and a cast of mine,” answered the bailie; “a cord and a confessor, that is all thou wilt have from us.”

“Sirs,” said the Sub-Prior, observing that his brethren began to take more interest than was exactly decorous in this wrangling betwixt justice and iniquity, “I pray you both to depart--Master Bailie, retire with your halberdiers, and trouble not the man whom we have dismissed.--And thou, Christie, or whatever be thy name, take thy departure, and remember thou owest thy life to the Lord Abbot's clemency.”

“Nay, as to that,” answered Christie, “I judge that I owe it to your own; but impute it to whom ye list, I owe a life among ye, and there is an end.” And whistling as he went, he left the apartment, seeming as if he held the life which he had forfeited not worthy further thanks.

“Obstinate even to brutality!” said Father Eustace; “and yet who knows but some better ore may lie under so rude an exterior?”

“Save a thief from the gallows,” said the Sacristan--“you know the rest of the proverb; and admitting, as may Heaven grant, that our lives and limbs are safe from this outrageous knave, who shall insure our meal and our malt, our herds and our flocks?”

“Marry, that will I, my brethren,” said an aged monk. “Ah, brethren, you little know what may be made of a repentant robber. In Abbot Ingilram's days--ay, and I remember them as it were yesterday--the freebooters were the best welcome men that came to Saint Mary's. Ay, they paid tithe of every drove that they brought over from the South, and because they were something lightly come by, I have known them make the tithe a seventh--that is, if their confessor knew his business--ay, when we saw from the tower a score of fat bullocks, or a drove of sheep, coming down the valley, with two or three stout men-at-arms behind them with their glittering steel caps, and their black-jacks, and their long lances, the good Lord Abbot Ingilram was wont to say--he was a merry man--there come the tithes of the spoilers of the Egyptians! Ay, and I have seen the famous John the Armstrang--a fair man he was and a goodly, the more pity that hemp was ever heckled for him--I have seen him come into the Abbey-church with nine tassels of gold in his bonnet, and every tassel made of nine English nobles, and he would go from chapel to chapel, and from image to image, and from altar to altar, on his knees--and leave here a tassel, and there a noble, till there was as little gold on his bonnet as on my hood--you will find no such Border thieves now!”

“No, truly, Brother Nicolas,” answered the Abbot; “they are more apt to take any gold the Church has left, than to bequeath or bestow any--and for cattle, beshrew me if I think they care whether beeves have fed on the meadows of Lanercost Abbey or of Saint Mary's!”

“There is no good thing left in them,” said Father Nicolas; “they are clean naught--Ah, the thieves that I have seen!--such proper men! and as pitiful as proper, and as pious as pitiful!”

“It skills not talking of it, Brother Nicolas,” said the Abbot; “and I will now dismiss you, my brethren, holding your meeting upon this our inquisition concerning the danger of our reverend Sub-Prior, instead of the attendance on the lauds this evening--Yet let the bells be duly rung for the edification of the laymen without, and also that the novices may give due reverence.--And now, benedicite, brethren! The cellarer will bestow on each a grace-cup and a morsel as ye pass the buttery, for ye have been turmoiled and anxious, and dangerous it is to fall asleep in such case with empty stomach.”

“_Gratias agimus quam maximas, Domine reverendissime_,” replied the brethren, departing in their due order.

But the Sub-Prior remained behind, and falling on his knees before the Abbot, as he was about to withdraw, craved him to hear under the seal of confession the adventures of the day. The reverend Lord Abbot yawned, and would have alleged fatigue; but to Father Eustace, of all men, he was ashamed to show indifference in his religious duties. The confession, therefore, proceeded, in which Father Eustace told all the extraordinary circumstances which had befallen him during the journey. And being questioned by the Abbot, whether he was not conscious of any secret sin, through which he might have been subjected for a time to the delusions of evil spirits, the Sub-Prior admitted, with frank avowal, that he thought he might have deserved such penance for having judged with unfraternal rigour of the report of Father Philip the Sacristan.

“Heaven,” said the penitent, “may have been willing to convince me, not only that he can at pleasure open a communication betwixt us and beings of a different, and, as we word it, supernatural class, but also to punish our pride of superior wisdom, or superior courage, or superior learning.”

It is well said that virtue is its own reward; and I question if duty was ever more completely recompensed, than by the audience which the reverend Abbot so unwillingly yielded to the confession of the Sub-Prior. To find the object of his fear shall we say, or of his envy, or of both, accusing himself of the very error with which he had so tacitly charged him, was a corroboration of the Abbot's judgment, a soothing of his pride, and an allaying of his fears. The sense of triumph, however, rather increased than diminished his natural good-humour; and so far was Abbot Boniface from being disposed to tyrannize over his Sub-Prior in consequence of this discovery, that in his exhortation he hovered somewhat ludicrously betwixt the natural expression of his own gratified vanity, and his timid reluctance to hurt the feelings of Father Eustace.

“My brother,” said he, _ex cathedra_, “it cannot have escaped your judicious observation, that we have often declined our own judgment in favour of your opinion, even about those matters which most nearly concerned the community. Nevertheless, grieved would we be, could you think that we did this, either because we deemed our own opinion less pregnant, or our wit more shallow, than that of our brethren. For it was done exclusively to give our younger brethren, such as your much esteemed self, my dearest brother, that courage which is necessary to a free deliverance of your opinion,--we ofttimes setting apart our proper judgment, that our inferiors, and especially our dear brother the Sub-Prior, may be comforted and encouraged in proposing valiantly his own thoughts. Which our deference and humility may, in some sort, have produced in your mind, most reverend brother, that self-opinion of parts and knowledge, which hath led unfortunately to your over-estimating your own faculties, and thereby subjecting yourself, as is but too visible, to the japes and mockeries of evil spirits. For it is assured that Heaven always holdeth us in the least esteem when we deem of ourselves most highly, and also, on the other hand, it may be that we have somewhat departed from what became our high seat in this Abbey, in suffering ourselves to be too much guided, and even, as it were, controlled, by the voice of our inferior. Wherefore,” continued the Lord Abbot, “in both of us such faults shall and must be amended--you hereafter presuming less upon your gifts and carnal wisdom, and I taking heed not so easily to relinquish mine own opinion for that of one lower in place and in office. Nevertheless, we would not that we should thereby lose the high advantage which we have derived, and may yet derive, from your wise counsels, which hath been so often recommended to us by our most reverend Primate. Wherefore, on affairs of high moment, we will call you to our presence in private, and listen to your opinion, which, if it shall agree with our own, we will deliver to the Chapter as emanating directly from ourselves; thus sparing you, dearest brother, that seeming victory which is so apt to engender spiritual pride, and avoiding ourselves the temptation of falling into that modest facility of opinion, whereby our office is lessened and our person (were that of consequence) rendered less important in the eyes of the community over which we preside.”

Notwithstanding the high notions which, as a rigid Catholic, Father Eustace entertained of the sacrament of confession, as his Church calls it, there was some danger that a sense of the ridiculous might have stolen on him, when he heard his Superior, with such simple cunning, lay out a little plan for availing himself of the Sub-Prior's wisdom and experience, while he should take the whole credit to himself. Yet his conscience immediately told him he was right.

“I should have thought more,” he reflected, “of the spiritual Superior, and less of the individual. I should have spread my mantle over the frailties of my spiritual father, and done what I might to support his character, and, of course, to extend his utility among the brethren, as well as with others. The Abbot cannot be humbled, but what the community must be humbled in his person. Her boast is, that over all her children, especially over those called to places of distinction, she can diffuse those gifts which are necessary to render them illustrious.”

Actuated by these sentiments, Father Eustace frankly assented to the charge which his Superior, even in that moment of authority, had rather intimated than made, and signified his humble acquiescence in any mode of communicating his counsel which might be most agreeable to the Lord Abbot, and might best remove from himself all temptation to glory in his own wisdom. He then prayed the reverend Father to assign him such penance as might best suit his offence, intimating, at the same time, that he had already fasted the whole day.

“And it is that I complain of,” answered the Abbot, instead of giving him credit for his abstinence; “it is these very penances, fasts, and vigils, of which we complain; as tending only to generate airs and fumes of vanity, which, ascending from the stomach into the head, do but puff us up with vain-glory and self-opinion. It is meet and beseeming that novices should undergo fasts and vigils; for some part of every community must fast, and young stomachs may best endure it. Besides, in them it abates wicked thoughts, and the desire of worldly delights. But, reverend brother, for those to fast who are dead and mortified to the world, as I and thou, is work of supererogation, and is but the matter of spiritual pride. Wherefore, I enjoin thee, most reverend brother, go to the buttery and drink two cups at least of good wine, eating withal a comfortable morsel, such as may best suit thy taste and stomach. And in respect that thine opinion of thy own wisdom hath at times made thee less conformable to, and companionable with, the weaker and less learned brethren, I enjoin thee, during the said repast, to choose for thy companion, our reverend brother Nicolas, and without interruption or impatience, to listen for a stricken hour to his narration, concerning those things which befel in the times of our venerable predecessor, Abbot Ingilram, on whose soul may Heaven have mercy! And for such holy exercises as may farther advantage your soul, and expiate the faults whereof you have contritely and humbly avowed yourself guilty, we will ponder upon that matter, and announce our will unto you the next morning.”

It was remarkable, that after this memorable evening, the feelings of the worthy Abbot towards his adviser were much more kindly and friendly than when he deemed the Sub-Prior the impeccable and infallible person, in whose garment of virtue and wisdom no flaw was to be discerned. It seemed as if this avowal of his own imperfections had recommended Father Eustace to the friendship of the Superior, although at the same time this increase of benevolence was attended with some circumstances, which, to a man of the Sub-Prior's natural elevation of mind and temper, were more grievous than even undergoing the legends of the dull and verbose Father Nicolas. For instance, the Abbot seldom mentioned him to the other monks, without designing him our beloved Brother Eustace, poor man!--and now and then he used to warn the younger brethren against the snares of vainglory and spiritual pride, which Satan sets for the more rigidly righteous, with such looks and demonstrations as did all but expressly designate the Sub-Prior as one who had fallen at one time under such delusions. Upon these occasions, it required all the votive obedience of a monk, all the philosophical discipline of the schools, and all the patience of a Christian, to enable Father Eustace to endure the pompous and patronizing parade of his honest, but somewhat thick-headed Superior. He began himself to be desirous of leaving the Monastery, or at least he manifestly declined to interfere with its affairs, in that marked and authoritative manner, which he had at first practised.

* * * * *

Chapter the Eleventh.

You call this education, do you not? Why 'tis the forced march of a herd of bullocks Before a shouting drover. The glad van Move on at ease, and pause a while to snatch A passing morsel from the dewy greensward, While all the blows, the oaths, the indignation, Fall on the croupe of the ill-fated laggard That cripples in the rear. OLD PLAY.

Two or three years glided on, during which the storm of the approaching alteration in church government became each day louder and more perilous. Owing to the circumstances which we have intimated in the end of the last chapter, the Sub-Prior Eustace appeared to have altered considerably his habits of life. He afforded, on all extraordinary occasions, to the Abbot, whether privately, or in the assembled Chapter, the support of his wisdom and experience; but in his ordinary habits he seemed now to live more for himself, and less for the community, than had been his former practice.

He often absented himself for whole days from the convent; and as the adventure of Glendearg dwelt deeply on his memory, he was repeatedly induced to visit that lonely tower, and to take an interest in the orphans who had their shelter under its roof. Besides, he felt a deep anxiety to know whether the volume which he had lost, when so strangely preserved from the lance of the murderer, had again found its way back to the Tower of Glendearg. “It was strange,” he thought, “that a spirit,” for such he could not help judging the being whose voice he had heard, “should, on the one side, seek the advancement of heresy, and, on the other, interpose to save the life of a zealous Catholic priest.”

But from no inquiry which he made of the various inhabitants of the Tower of Glendearg could he learn that the copy of the translated Scriptures, for which he made such diligent inquiry, had again been seen by any of them.

In the meanwhile, the good father's occasional visits were of no small consequence to Edward Glendinning and to Mary Avenel. The former displayed a power of apprehending and retaining whatever was taught him, which tilled Father Eustace with admiration. He was at once acute and industrious, alert and accurate; one of those rare combinations of talent and industry, which are seldom united.

It was the earnest desire of Father Eustace that the excellent qualities thus early displayed by Edward should be dedicated to the service of the Church, to which he thought the youth's own consent might be easily obtained, as he was of a calm, contemplative, retired habit, and seemed to consider knowledge as the principal object, and its enlargement as the greatest pleasure, in life. As to the mother, the Sub-Prior had little doubt that, trained as she was to view the monks of Saint Mary's with such profound reverence, she would be but too happy in an opportunity of enrolling one of her sons in its honoured community. But the good Father proved to be mistaken in both these particulars.

When he spoke to Elspeth Glendinning of that which a mother best loves to hear--the proficiency and abilities of her son--she listened with a delighted ear. But when Father Eustace hinted at the duty of dedicating to the service of the Church, talents which seemed fitted to defend and adorn it, the dame endeavoured always to shift the subject; and when pressed farther, enlarged on her own incapacity, as a lone woman, to manage the feu; on the advantage which her neighbours of the township were often taking of her unprotected state, and on the wish she had that Edward might fill his father's place, remain in the tower, and close her eyes.

On such occasions the Sub-Prior would answer, that even in a worldly point of view the welfare of the family would be best consulted by one of the sons entering into the community of Saint Mary's, as it was not to be supposed that he would fail to afford his family the important protection which he could then easily extend towards them. What could be a more pleasing prospect than to see him high in honour? or what more sweet than to have the last duties rendered to her by a son, reverend for his holiness of life and exemplary manners? Besides, he endeavoured to impress upon the dame, that her eldest son, Halbert, whose bold temper and headstrong indulgence of a wandering humour, rendered him incapable of learning, was, for that reason, as well as that he was her eldest born, fittest to bustle through the affairs of the world, and manage the little fief.

Elspeth durst not directly dissent from what was proposed, for fear of giving displeasure, and yet she always had something to say against it. Halbert, she said, was not like any of the neighbour boys--he was taller by the head, and stronger by the half, than any boy of his years within the Halidome. But he was fit for no peaceful work that could be devised. If he liked a book ill, he liked a plough or a pattle worse. He had scoured his father's old broadsword--suspended it by a belt round his waist, and seldom stirred without it. He was a sweet boy and a gentle if spoken fair, but cross him and he was a born devil. “In a word,” she said, bursting into tears, “deprive me of Edward, good father, and ye bereave my house of prop and pillar; for my heart tells me that Halbert will take to his father's gates, and die his father's death.”

When the conversation came to this crisis, the good-humoured monk was always content to drop the discussion for the time, trusting some opportunity would occur of removing her prejudices, for such he thought them, against Edward's proposed destination.

When, leaving the mother, the Sub-Prior addressed himself to the son, animating his zeal for knowledge, and pointing out how amply it might be gratified should he agree to take holy orders, he found the same repugnance which Dame Elspeth had exhibited. Edward pleaded a want of sufficient vocation to so serious a profession--his reluctance to leave his mother, and other objections, which the Sub-Prior treated as evasive.

“I plainly perceive,” he said one day, in answer to them, “that the devil has his factors as well as Heaven, and that they are equally, or, alas! the former are perhaps more active, in bespeaking for their master the first of the market. I trust, young man, that neither idleness, nor licentious pleasure, nor the love of worldly gain and worldly grandeur, the chief baits with which the great Fisher of souls conceals his hook, are the causes of your declining the career to which I would incite you. But above all I trust--above all I hope--that the vanity of superior knowledge--a sin with which those who have made proficiency in learning are most frequently beset--has not led you into the awful hazard of listening to the dangerous doctrines which are now afloat concerning religion. Better for you that you were as grossly ignorant as the beasts which perish, that that the pride of knowledge should induce you to lend an ear to the voice of heretics.” Edward Glendinning listened to the rebuke with a downcast look, and failed not, when it was concluded, earnestly to vindicate himself from the charge of having pushed his studies into any subjects which the Church inhibited; and so the monk was left to form vain conjectures respecting the cause of his reluctance to embrace the monastic state.

It is an old proverb, used by Chaucer, and quoted by Elizabeth, that “the greatest clerks are not the wisest men;” and it is as true as if the poet had not rhymed, or the queen reasoned on it. If Father Eustace had not had his thoughts turned so much to the progress of heresy, and so little to what was passing in the tower, he might have read, in the speaking eyes of Mary Avenel, now a girl of fourteen or fifteen, reasons which might disincline her youthful companion towards the monastic vows. I have said, that she also was a promising pupil of the good father, upon whom her innocent and infantine beauty had an effect of which he was himself, perhaps, unconscious. Her rank and expectations entitled her to be taught the arts of reading and writing;--and each lesson which the monk assigned her was conned over in company with Edward, and by him explained and re-explained, and again illustrated, until she became perfectly mistress of it.

In the beginning of their studies, Halbert had been their school companion. But the boldness and impatience of his disposition soon quarrelled with an occupation in which, without assiduity and unremitted attention, no progress was to be expected. The Sub-Prior's visits were at regular intervals, and often weeks would intervene between them, in which case Halbert was sure to forget all that had been prescribed for him to learn, and much which he had partly acquired before. His deficiencies on these occasions gave him pain, but it was not of that sort which produces amendment.

For a time, like all who are fond of idleness, he endeavoured to detach the attention of his brother and Mary Avenel from their task, rather than to learn his own, and such dialogues as the following would ensue:

“Take your bonnet, Edward, and make haste--the Laird of Colmslie is at the head of the glen with his hounds.”

“I care not, Halbert,” answered the younger brother; “two brace of dogs may kill a deer without my being there to see them, and I must help Mary Avenel with her lesson.”

“Ay! you will labour at the monk's lessons till you turn monk yourself,” answered Halbert.--“Mary, will you go with me, and I will show you the cushat's nest I told you of?”

“I cannot go with you, Halbert,” answered Mary, “because I must study this lesson--it will take me long to learn it--I am sorry I am so dull, for if I could get my task as fast as Edward, I should like to go with you.”

“Should you indeed?” said Halbert; “then I will wait for you--and, what is more, I will try to get my lesson also.”

With a smile and a sigh he took up the primer, and began heavily to con over the task which had been assigned him. As if banished from the society of the two others, he sat sad and solitary in one of the deep window-recesses, and after in vain struggling with the difficulties of his task, and his disinclination to learn it, he found himself involuntarily engaged in watching the movements of the other two students, instead of toiling any longer.

The picture which Halbert looked upon was delightful in itself, but somehow or other it afforded very little pleasure to him. The beautiful girl, with looks of simple, yet earnest anxiety, was bent on disentangling those intricacies which obstructed her progress to knowledge, and looking ever and anon to Edward for assistance, while, seated close by her side, and watchful to remove every obstacle from her way, he seemed at once to be proud of the progress which his pupil made, and of the assistance which he was able to render her. There was a bond betwixt them, a strong and interesting tie, the desire of obtaining knowledge, the pride of surmounting difficulties.

Feeling most acutely, yet ignorant of the nature and source of his own emotions, Halbert could no longer endure to look upon this quiet scene, but, starting up, dashed his book from him, and exclaimed aloud, “To the fiend I bequeath all books, and the dreamers that make them!--I would a score of Southrons would come up the glen, and we should learn how little all this muttering and scribbling is worth.”

Mary Avenol and his brother started, and looked at Halbert with surprise, while he went on with great animation, his features swelling, and the tears starting into his eyes as he spoke.--“Yes, Mary--I wish a score of Southrons came up the glen this very day; and you should see one good hand, and one good sword, do more to protect you, than all the books that were ever opened, and all the pens that ever grew on a goose's wing.”

Mary looked a little surprised and a little frightened at his vehemence, but instantly replied affectionately, “You are vexed, Halbert, because you do not get your lesson so fast as Edward can; and so am I, for I am as stupid as you--But come, and Edward shall sit betwixt us and teach us.”

“He shall not teach _me_,” said Halbert, in the same angry mood; “I never can teach _him_ to do any thing that is honourable and manly, and he shall not teach _me_ any of his monkish tricks.--I hate the monks, with their drawling nasal tone like so many frogs, and their long black petticoats like so many women, and their reverences, and their lordships, and their lazy vassals that do nothing but peddle in the mire with plough and harrow from Yule to Michaelmas. I will call none lord, but him who wears a sword to make his title good; and I will call none man, but he that can bear himself manlike and masterful.”

“For Heaven's sake, peace, brother!” said Edward; “if such words were taken up and reported out of the house, they would be our mother's ruin.”

“Report them yourself, then, and they will be _your_ making, and nobody's marring save mine own. Say that Halbert Glendinning will never be vassal to an old man with a cowl and shaven crown, while there are twenty barons who wear casque and plume that lack bold followers. Let them grant you these wretched acres, and much meal may they bear you to make your _brachan_.” He left the room hastily, but instantly returned, and continued to speak with the same tone of quick and irritated feeling. “And you need not think so much, neither of you, and especially you, Edward, need not think so much of your parchment book there, and your cunning in reading it. By my faith, I will soon learn to read as well as you; and--for I know a better teacher than your grim old monk, and a better book than his printed breviary; and since you like scholarcraft so well, Mary Avenel, you shall see whether Edward or I have most of it.” He left the apartment, and came not again.

“What can be the matter with him?” said Mary, following Halbert with her eyes from the window, as with hasty and unequal steps he ran up the wild glen--“Where can your brother be going, Edward?--what book?--what teacher does he talk of?”

“It avails not guessing,” said Edward. “Halbert is angry, he knows not why, and speaks of he knows not what; let us go again to our lessons, and he will come home when he has tired himself with scrambling among the crags as usual.”

But Mary's anxiety on account of Halbert seemed more deeply rooted. She declined prosecuting the task in which they had been so pleasingly engaged, under the excuse of a headache; nor could Edward prevail upon her to resume it again that morning.

Meanwhile Halbert, his head unbonneted, his features swelled with jealous anger, and the tear still in his eye, sped up the wild and upper extremity of the little valley of Glendearg with the speed of a roebuck, choosing, as if in desperate defiance of the difficulties of the way, the wildest and most dangerous paths, and voluntarily exposing himself a hundred times to dangers which he might have escaped by turning a little aside from them. It seemed as if he wished his course to be as straight as that of the arrow to its mark.

He arrived at length in a narrow and secluded _cleuch_, or deep ravine, which ran down into the valley, and contributed a scanty rivulet to the supply of the brook with which Glendearg is watered. Up this he sped with the same precipitate haste which had marked his departure from the tower, nor did he pause and look around until he had reached the fountain from which the rivulet had its rise.

Here Halbert stopt short, and cast a gloomy, and almost a frightened glance around him. A huge rock rose in front, from a cleft of which grew a wild holly-tree, whose dark green branches rustled over the spring which arose beneath. The banks on either hand rose so high, and approached each other so closely, that it was only when the sun was at its meridian height, and during the summer solstice, that its rays could reach the bottom of the chasm in which he stood. But it was now summer, and the hour was noon, so that the unwonted reflection of the sun was dancing in the pellucid fountain.

“It is the season and the hour,” said Halbert to himself; “and now I--I might soon become wiser than Edward with all his pains! Mary should see whether he alone is fit to be consulted, and to sit by her side, and hang over her as she reads, and point out every word and every letter. And she loves me better than him--I am sure she does--for she comes of noble blood, and scorns sloth and cowardice.--And do I myself not stand here slothful and cowardly as any priest of them all?--Why should I fear to call upon this form--this shape?--Already have I endured the vision, and why not again? What can it do to me, who am a man of lith and limb, and have by my side my father's sword? Does my heart beat--do my hairs bristle, at the thought of calling up a painted shadow, and how should I face a band of Southrons in flesh and blood? By the soul of the first Glendinning, I will make proof of the charm!”

He cast the leathern brogue or buskin from his right foot, planted himself in a firm posture, unsheathed his sword, and first looking around to collect his resolution, he bowed three times deliberately towards the holly-tree, and as often to the little fountain, repeating at the same time, with a determined voice, the following rhyme:

“Thrice to the holly brake-- Thrice to the well:-- I bid thee awake, White Maid of Avenel!

“Noon gleams on the Lake-- Noon glows on the Fell-- Wake thee, O wake, White Maid of Avenel!”

These lines were hardly uttered, when there stood the figure of a female clothed in white, within three steps of Halbert Glendinning.

“I guess'twas frightful there to see A lady richly clad as she-- Beautiful exceedingly.” [Footnote: Coleridge's Christabelle.]

* * * * *

Chapter the Twelfth.

There's something in that ancient superstition, Which, erring as it is, our fancy loves. The spring that, with its thousand crystal bubbles, Bursts from the bosom of some desert rock In secret solitude, may well be deem'd The haunt of something purer, more refined, And mightier than ourselves. OLD PLAY.

Young Halbert Glendinning had scarcely pronounced the mystical rhymes, than, as we have mentioned in the conclusion of the last chapter, an appearance, as of a beautiful female, dressed in white, stood within two yards of him. His terror for the moment overcame his natural courage, as well as the strong resolution which he had formed, that the figure which he had now twice seen should not a third time daunt him. But it would seem there is something thrilling and abhorrent to flesh and blood, in the consciousness that we stand in presence of a being in form like to ourselves, but so different in faculties and nature, that we can neither understand its purposes, nor calculate its means of pursuing them.

Halbert stood silent and gasped for breath, his hairs erecting themselves on his head---his mouth open--his eyes fixed, and, as the sole remaining sign of his late determined purpose, his sword pointed towards the apparition. At length with a voice of ineffable sweetness, the White Lady, for by that name we shall distinguish this being, sung, or rather chanted, the following lines:--

“Youth of the dark eye, wherefore didst thou call me? Wherefore art thou here, if terrors can appal thee? He that seeks to deal with us must know no fear nor failing! To coward and churl our speech is dark, our gifts are unavailing. The breeze that brought me hither now, must sweep Egyptian ground, The fleecy cloud on which I ride for Araby is bound; The fleecy cloud is drifting by, the breeze sighs for my stay, For I must sail a thousand miles before the close of day.”

The astonishment of Halbert began once more to give way to his resolution, and he gained voice enough to say, though with a faltering accent, “In the name of God, what art thou?” The answer was in melody of a different tone and measure:--

“What I am I must not show-- What I am thou couldst not know-- Something betwixt heaven and hell-- Something that neither stood nor fell-- Something that through thy wit or will May work thee good--may work thee ill. Neither substance quite nor shadow, Haunting lonely moor and meadow, Dancing; by the haunted spring, Riding on the whirlwind's wing; Aping in fantastic fashion Every change of human passion,

While o'er our frozen minds they pass, Like shadows from the mirror'd glass. Wayward, fickle is our mood, Hovering betwixt bad and good, Happier than brief-dated man, Living twenty times his span; Far less happy, for we have Help nor hope beyond the grave! Man awakes to joy or sorrow; Ours the sleep that knows no morrow. This is all that I can show-- This is all that thou mayest know.”

The White Lady paused, and appeared to await an answer; but, as Halbert hesitated how to frame his speech, the vision seemed gradually to fade, and became more and more incorporeal. Justly guessing this to be a symptom of her disappearance, Halbert compelled himself to say,--“Lady, when I saw you in the glen, and when you brought back the black book of Mary Avenel, thou didst say I should one day learn to read it.”

The White Lady replied,

“Ay! and I taught thee the word and the spell, To waken me here by the Fairies' Well, But thou hast loved the heron and hawk, More than to seek my haunted walk; And thou hast loved the lance and the sword, More than good text and holy word; And thou hast loved the deer to track, More than the lines and the letters black; And thou art a ranger of moss and of wood, And scornest the nurture of gentle blood.”

“I will do so no longer, fair maiden,” said Halbert; “I desire to learn; and thou didst promise me, that when I did so desire, thou wouldst be my helper; I am no longer afraid of thy presence, and I am no longer regardless of instruction.” As he uttered these words, the figure of the White Maiden grew gradually as distinct as it had been at first; and what had well-nigh faded into an ill-defined and colourless shadow, again assumed an appearance at least of corporeal consistency, although the hues were less vivid, and the outline of the figure less distinct and defined--so at least it seemed to Halbert--than those of an ordinary inhabitant of earth. “Wilt thou grant my request,” he said, “fair Lady, and give to my keeping the holy book which Mary of Avenel has so often wept for?”

The White Lady replied:

“Thy craven fear my truth accused, Thine idlehood my trust abused; He that draws to harbour late, Must sleep without, or burst the gate.

There is a star for thee which burn'd. Its influence wanes, its course is turn'd; Valour and constancy alone Can bring thee back the chance that's flown.”

“If I have been a loiterer, Lady,” answered young Glendinning, “thou shalt now find me willing to press forward with double speed. Other thoughts have filled my mind, other thoughts have engaged my heart, within a brief period--and by Heaven, other occupations shall henceforward fill up my time. I have lived in this day the space of years--I came hither a boy--I will return a man--a man, such as may converse not only with his own kind, but with whatever God permits to be visible to him. I will learn the contents of that mysterious volume--I will learn why the Lady of Avenel loved it--why the priests feared, and would have stolen it--why thou didst twice recover it from their hands.--What mystery is wrapt in it?--Speak, I conjure thee!” The lady assumed an air peculiarly sad and solemn, as drooping her head, and folding her arms on her bosom, she replied:

“Within that awful volume lies The mystery of mysteries! Happiest they of human race, To whom God has granted grace

To read, to fear, to hope, to pray, To lift the latch, and force the way; And better had they ne'er been born, Who read, to doubt, or read to scorn.”

“Give me the volume, Lady,” said young Glendinning. “They call me idle--they call me dull--in this pursuit my industry shall not fail, nor, with God's blessing, shall my understanding. Give me the volume.” The apparition again replied:

“Many a fathom dark and deep I have laid the book to sleep; Ethereal fires around it glowing-- Ethereal music ever flowing-- The sacred pledge of Heav'n All things revere. Each in his sphere, Save man for whom 'twas giv'n: Lend thy hand, and thou shalt spy Things ne'er seen by mortal eye.”

Halbert Glendinning boldly reached his hand to the White Lady.

“Fearest thou to go with me?” she said, as his hand trembled at the soft and cold touch of her own--

“Fearest thou to go with me? Still it is free to thee A peasant to dwell: Thou mayst drive the dull steer, And chase the king's deer, But never more come near This haunted well.”

“If what thou sayest be true,” said the undaunted boy, “my destinies are higher than thine own. There shall be neither well nor wood which I dare not visit. No fear of aught, natural or supernatural, shall bar my path through my native valley.”

He had scarce uttered the words, when they both descended through the earth with a rapidity which took away Halbert's breath and every other sensation, saving that of being hurried on with the utmost velocity. At length they stopped with a shock so sudden, that the mortal journeyer through this unknown space must have been thrown down with violence, had he not been upheld by his supernatural companion.

It was more than a minute, ere, looking around him, he beheld a grotto, or natural cavern, composed of the most splendid spars and crystals, which returned in a thousand prismatic hues the light of a brilliant flame that glowed on an altar of alabaster. This altar, with its fire, formed the central point of the grotto, which was of a round form, and very high in the roof, resembling in some respects the dome of a cathedral. Corresponding to the four points of the compass, there went off four long galleries, or arcades, constructed of the same brilliant materials with the dome itself, and the termination of which was lost in darkness.

No human imagination can conceive, or words suffice to describe, the glorious radiance which, shot fiercely forth by the flame, was returned from so many hundred thousand points of reflection, afforded by the sparry pillars and their numerous angular crystals. The fire itself did not remain steady and unmoved, but rose and fell, sometimes ascending in a brilliant pyramid of condensed flame half way up the lofty expanse, and again fading into a softer and more rosy hue, and hovering, as it were, on the surface of the altar to collect its strength for another powerful exertion. There was no visible fuel by which it was fed, nor did it emit either smoke or vapour of any kind.

What was of all the most remarkable, the black volume so often mentioned lay not only unconsumed, but untouched in the slightest degree, amid this intensity of fire, which, while it seemed to be of force sufficient to melt adamant, had no effect whatever on the sacred book thus subjected to its utmost influence.

The White Lady, having paused long enough to let young Glendinning take a complete survey of what was around him, now said in her usual chant,

“Here lies the volume thou boldly hast sought; Touch it, and take it,--'twill dearly be bought!”

Familiarized in some degree with marvels, and desperately desirous of showing the courage he had boasted, Halbert plunged his hand, without hesitation, into the flame, trusting to the rapidity of the motion, to snatch out the volume before the fire could greatly affect him. But he was much disappointed. The flame instantly caught upon his sleeve, and though he withdrew his hand immediately, yet his arm was so dreadfully scorched, that he had well-nigh screamed with pain. He suppressed the natural expression of anguish, however, and only intimated the agony which he felt by a contortion and a muttered groan. The White Lady passed her cold hand over his arm, and, ere she had finished the following metrical chant, his pain had entirely gone, and no mark of the scorching was visible:

“Rash thy deed, Mortal weed To immortal flames applying; Rasher trust Has thing of dust, On his own weak worth relying: Strip thee of such fences vain, Strip, and prove thy luck, again.”

Obedient to what he understood to be the meaning of his conductress, Halbert bared his arm to the shoulder, throwing down the remains of his sleeve, which no sooner touched the floor on which he stood than it collected itself together, shrivelled itself up, and was without any visible fire reduced to light tinder, which a sudden breath of wind dispersed into empty space. The White Lady, observing the surprise of the youth, immediately repeated--

“Mortal warp and mortal woof. Cannot brook this charmed roof; All that mortal art hath wrought, In our cell returns to nought. The molten gold returns to clay, The polish'd diamond melts away. All is alter'd, all is flown, Nought stands fast but truth alone. Not for that thy quest give o'er: Courage! prove thy chance once more.”

Imboldened by her words, Halbert Glendinning made a second effort, and, plunging his bare arm into the flame, took out the sacred volume without feeling either heat or inconvenience of any kind. Astonished, and almost terrified at his own success, he beheld the flame collect itself, and shoot up into one long and final stream, which seemed as if it would ascend to the very roof of the cavern, and then, sinking as suddenly, became totally extinguished. The deepest darkness ensued; but Halbert had no time to consider his situation, for the White Lady had already caught his hand, and they ascended to upper air with the same velocity with which they had sunk into the earth.

They stood by the fountain in the Corri-nan-shian when they emerged from the bowels of the earth; but on casting a bewildered glance around him, the youth was surprised to observe, that the shadows had fallen far to the east, and that the day was well-nigh spent. He gazed on his conductress for explanation, but her figure began to fade before his eyes--her cheeks grew paler, her features less distinct, her form became shadowy, and blended itself with the mist which was ascending the hollow ravine. What had late the symmetry of form, and the delicate, yet clear hues of feminine beauty, now resembled the flitting and pale ghost of some maiden who has died for love, as it is seen indistinctly and by moonlight, by her perjured lover.

“Stay, spirit!” said the youth, imboldened by his success in the subterranean dome, “thy kindness must not leave me, as one encumbered with a weapon he knows not how to wield. Thou must teach me the art to read, and to understand this volume; else what avails it me that I possess it?”

But the figure of the White Lady still waned before his eye, until it became an outline as pale and indistinct as that of the moon, when the winter morning is far advanced, and ere she had ended the following chant, she was entirely invisible:--

“Alas! alas! Not ours the grace These holy characters to trace: Idle forms of painted air, Not to us is given to share The boon bestow'd on Adam's race! With patience bide. Heaven will provide The fitting time, the fitting guide.”

The form was already gone, and now the voice itself had melted away in melancholy cadence, softening, as if the Being who spoke had been slowly wafted from the spot where she had commenced her melody.

It was at this moment that Halbert felt the extremity of the terror which he had hitherto so manfully suppressed. The very necessity of exertion had given him spirit to make it, and the presence of the mysterious Being, while it was a subject of fear in itself, had nevertheless given him the sense of protection being near to him. It was when he could reflect with composure on what had passed, that a cold tremor shot across his limbs, his hair bristled, and he was afraid to look around lest he should find at his elbow something more frightful than the first vision. A breeze arising suddenly, realized the beautiful and wild idea of the most imaginative of our modern bards [Footnote: Coleridge.]--

It fann'd his cheek, it raised his hair, Like a meadow pale in spring; It mingled strangely with his fears, Yet it fell like a welcoming.

The youth stood silent and astonished for a few minutes. It seemed to him that the extraordinary Being he had seen, half his terror, half his protectress, was still hovering on the gale which swept past him, and that she might again make herself sensible to his organs of sight. “Speak!” he said, wildly tossing his arms, “speak yet again--be once more present, lovely vision!--thrice have I now seen thee, yet the idea of thy invisible presence around or beside me, makes my heart beat faster than if the earth yawned and gave up a demon.”

But neither sound nor appearance indicated the presence of the White Lady, and nothing preternatural beyond what he had already witnessed, was again audible or visible. Halbert, in the meanwhile, by the very exertion of again inviting the presence of this mysterious Being, had recovered his natural audacity. He looked around once more, and resumed his solitary path down the valley into whose recesses he had penetrated.

Nothing could be more strongly contrasted than the storm of passion with which he had bounded over stock and crag, in order to plunge himself into the Corri-nan-shian, and the sobered mood in which he now returned homeward, industriously seeking out the most practicable path, not from a wish to avoid danger, but that he might not by personal toil distract his attention, deeply fixed on the extraordinary scene which he had witnessed. In the former case, he had sought by hazard and bodily exertion to indulge at once the fiery excitation of passion, and to banish the cause of the excitement from his recollection; while now he studiously avoided all interruption to his contemplative walk, lest the difficulty of the way should interfere with, or disturb, his own deep reflections. Thus slowly pacing forth his course, with the air of a pilgrim rather than of a deer-hunter, Halbert about the close of the evening regained his paternal tower.

Chapter the Thirteenth.

The Miller was of manly make, To meet him was na mows; There durst na ten come him to take, Sae noited he their pows. CHRIST'S KIRK ON THE GREEN.

It was after sunset, as we have already stated, when Halbert Glendinning returned to the abode of his father. The hour of dinner was at noon, and that of supper about an hour after sunset at this period of the year. The former had passed without Halbert's appearing; but this was no uncommon circumstance, for the chase, or any other pastime which occurred, made Halbert a frequent neglecter of hours; and his mother, though angry and disappointed when she saw him not at table, was so much accustomed to his occasional absence, and knew so little how to teach him more regularity, that a testy observation was almost all the censure with which such omissions were visited.

On the present occasion, however, the wrath of good Dame Elspeth soared higher than usual. It was not merely on account of the special tup's head and trotters, the haggis and the side of mutton, with which her table was set forth, but also because of the arrival of no less a person than Hob Miller, as he was universally termed, though the man's name was Happer.

The object of the Miller's visit to the Tower of Glendearg was like the purpose of those embassies which potentates send to each other's courts, partly ostensible, partly politic. In outward show, Hob came to visit his friends of the Halidome, and share the festivity common among country folk, after the barn-yard has been filled, and to renew old intimacies by new conviviality. But in very truth he also came to have an eye upon the contents of each stack, and to obtain such information respecting the extent of the crop reaped and gathered in by each feuar, as might prevent the possibility of _abstracted multures_.

All the world knows that the cultivators of each barony or regality, temporal or spiritual, in Scotland, are obliged to bring their corn to be grinded at the mill of the territory, for which they pay a heavy charge, called the _intown multures_. I could speak to the thirlage of _invecta et illata_ too, but let that pass. I have said enough to intimate that I talk not without book. Those of the _Sucken_, or enthralled ground, were liable in penalties, if, deviating from this thirlage, (or thraldom,) they carried their grain to another mill. Now such another mill, erected on the lands of a lay-baron, lay within a tempting and convenient distance of Glendearg; and the Miller was so obliging, and his charges so moderate, that it required Hob Miller's utmost vigilance to prevent evasions of his right of monopoly.

The most effectual means he could devise was this show of good fellowship and neighbourly friendship,--under colour of which he made his annual cruise through the barony--numbered every corn-stack, and computed its contents by the boll, so that he could give a shrewd hint afterwards whether or not the grist came to the right mill.

Dame Elspeth, like her compeers, was obliged to take these domiciliary visits in the sense of politeness; but in her case they had not occurred since her husband's death, probably because the Tower of Glendearg was distant, and there was but a trifling quantity of arable or _infield_ land attached to it. This year there had been, upon some speculation of old Martin's, several bolls sown in the exit-field, which, the season being fine, had ripened remarkably well. Perhaps this circumstance occasioned the honest Miller's including Glendearg, on this occasion, in his annual round Dame Glendinning received with pleasure a visit which she used formerly only to endure with patience; and she had changed her view of the matter chiefly, if not entirely, because Hob had brought with him his daughter Mysie, of whose features she could give so slight an account, but whose dress she had described so accurately to the Sub-Prior.

Hitherto this girl had been an object of very trifling consideration in the eyes of the good widow; but the Sub-Prior's particular and somewhat mysterious inquiries had set her brains to work on the subject of Mysie of the Mill; and she had here asked a broad question, and there she had thrown out an innuendo, and there again she had gradually led on to a conversation on the subject of poor Mysie. And from all inquiries and investigations she had collected, that Mysie was a dark-eyed, laughter-loving wench, with cherry-cheeks, and a skin as white as her father's finest bolted flour, out of which was made the Abbot's own wastel-bread. For her temper, she sung and laughed from morning to night; and for her fortune, a material article, besides that which the Miller might have amassed by means of his proverbial golden thumb, Mysie was to inherit a good handsome lump of land, with a prospect of the mill and mill-acres descending to her husband on an easy lease, if a fair word were spoken in season to the Abbot, and to the Prior, and to the Sub-Prior, and to the Sacristan, and so forth.

By turning and again turning these advantages over in her own mind, Elspeth at length came to be of opinion, that the only way to save her son Halbert from a life of “spur, spear, and snaffle,” as they called that of the border-riders, from the dint of a cloth-yard shaft, or the loop of an inch-cord, was, that he should marry and settle, and that Mysie Happer should be his destined bride.

As if to her wish, Hob Miller arrived on his strong-built mare, bearing on a pillion behind him the lovely Mysie, with cheeks like a peony-rose, (if Dame Glendinning had ever seen one,) spirits all afloat with rustic coquetry, and a profusion of hair as black as ebony. The _beau-ideal_ which Dame Glendinning had been bodying forth in her imagination, became unexpectedly realized in the buxom form of Mysie Happer, whom, in the course of half an hour, she settled upon as the maiden who was to fix the restless and untutored Halbert. True, Mysie, as the dame soon saw, was like to love dancing round a May-pole as well as managing a domestic establishment, and Halbert was like to break more heads than he would grind stacks of corn. But then a miller should always be of manly make, and has been described so since the days of Chaucer and James I. [Footnote: The verse we have chosen for a motto, is from a poem imputed to James I. of Scotland. As for the Miller who figures among the Canterbury pilgrims, besides his sword and buckler, he boasted other attributes, all of which, but especially the last, show that he relied more on the strength of the outside than that of the inside of his skull.

The miller was a stout carl for the nones, Full big he was of brawn, and eke of bones; That proved well, for wheresoe'r he cam, At wrestling he wold bear away the ram; He was short shoulder'd, broad, a thick gnar; There n'as no door that he n'old heave of bar, Or break it at a running with his head, &c. ]

Indeed, to be able to outdo and bully the whole _Sucken_, (once more we use this barbarous phrase,) in all athletic exercises, was one way to render easy the collection of dues which men would have disputed with a less formidable champion. Then, as to the deficiencies of the miller's wife, the dame was of opinion that they might be supplied by the activity of the miller's mother. “I will keep house for the young folk myself, for the tower is grown very lonely,” thought Dame Glendinning, “and to live near the kirk will be mair comfortable in my auld age--and then Edward may agree with his brother about the feu, more especially as he is a favourite with the Sub-Prior, and then he may live in the auld tower like his worthy father before him--and wha kens but Mary Avenel, high-blood as she is, may e'en draw in her stool to the chimney-nook, and sit down here for good and a'?--It's true she has no tocher, but the like of her for beauty and sense ne'er crossed my een; and I have kend every wench in the Halidome of St. Mary's--ay, and their mothers that bore them--ay, she is a sweet and a lovely creature as ever tied snood over brown hair--ay, and then, though her uncle keeps her out of her ain for the present time, yet it is to be thought the gray-goose shaft will find a hole in his coat of proof, as, God help us! it has done in many a better man's--And, moreover, if they should stand on their pedigree and gentle race, Edward might say to them, that is, to her gentle kith and kin, 'whilk o' ye was her best friend, when she came down the glen to Glendearg in a misty evening, on a beast mair like a cuddie than aught else?'--And if they tax him with churl's blood, Edward might say, that, forby the old proverb, how

Gentle deed Makes gentle bleid;

yet, moreover, there comes no churl's blood from Glendinning or Brydone; for, says Edward--”

The hoarse voice of the Miller at this moment recalled the dame from her reverie, and compelled her to remember that if she meant to realize her airy castle, she must begin by laying the foundation in civility to her guest and his daughter, whom she was at that moment most strangely neglecting, though her whole plan turned on conciliating their favour and good opinion, and that, in fact, while arranging matters for so intimate a union with her company, she was suffering them to sit unnoticed, and in their riding gear, as if about to resume their journey. “And so I say, dame,” concluded the Miller, (for she had not marked the beginning of his speech,) “an ye be so busied with your housekep, or ought else, why, Mysie and I will trot our way down the glen again to Johnnie Broxmouth's, who pressed us right kindly to bide with him.”

Starting at once from her dream of marriages and intermarriages, mills, mill-lands, and baronies, Dame Elspeth felt for a moment like the milk-maid in the fable, when she overset the pitcher, on the contents of which so many golden dreams were founded. But the foundation of Dame Glendinning's hopes was only tottering, not overthrown, and she hastened to restore its equilibrium. Instead of attempting to account for her absence of mind and want of attention to her guests, which she might have found something difficult, she assumed the offensive, like an able general when he finds it necessary, by a bold attack, to disguise his weakness.

A loud exclamation she made, and a passionate complaint she set up against the unkindness of her old friend, who could for an instant doubt the heartiness of her welcome to him and to his hopeful daughter; and then to think of his going back to Johnny Broxmouth's, when the auld tower stood where it did, and had room in it for a friend or two in the worst of times--and he too a neighbour that his umquhile gossip Simon, blessed be his cast, used to think the best friend he had in the Halidome! And on she went, urging her complaint with so much seriousness, that she had well-nigh imposed on herself as well as upon Hob Miller, who had no mind to take any thing in dudgeon; and as it suited his plans to pass the night at Glendearg, would have been equally contented to do so even had his reception been less vehemently hospitable.

To all Elspeth's expostulations on the unkindness of his proposal to leave her dwelling, he answered composedly, “Nay, dame, what could I tell? ye might have had other grist to grind, for ye looked as if ye scarce saw us--or what know I? ye might bear in mind the words Martin and I had about the last barley ye sawed--for I ken dry multures [Footnote: Dry multures were a fine, or compensation in money, for not grinding at the mill of the thirl. It was, and is, accounted a vexatious exaction.] will sometimes stick in the throat. A man seeks but his awn, and yet folk shall hold him for both miller and miller's man, that is millar and knave, [Footnote: The under miller is, in the language of thirlage, called the knave, which, indeed, signified originally his lad. (_Knabe_--German,) but by degrees came to be taken in a worse sense. In the old translation of the Bible, Paul is made to term himself the knave of our Saviour. The allowance of meal taken by the miller's servant was called knave-ship.] all the country over.”

“Alas, that you will say so, neighbour Hob,” said Dame Elspeth, “or that Martin should have had any words with you about the mill-dues! I will chide him roundly for it, I promise you, on the faith of a true widow. You know full well that a lone woman is sore put upon by her servants.”

“Nay, dame,” said the miller, unbuckling the broad belt which made fast his cloak, and served, at the same time, to suspend by his side a swinging Andrea Ferrara, “bear no grudge at Martin, for I bear none--I take it on me as a thing of mine office, to maintain my right of multure, lock, and gowpen. [Note: The multure was the regular exaction for grinding the meal. The _lock_, signifying a small quantity, and the _gowpen_, a handful, were additional perquisites demanded by the miller, and submitted to or resisted by the _Suckener_ as circumstances permitted. These and other petty dues were called in general the _Sequels_.] And reason good, for as the old song says,

I live by my mill. God bless her, She's parent, child, and wife.

The poor old slut, I am beholden to her for my living, and bound to stand by her, as I say to my mill knaves, in right and in wrong. And so should every honest fellow stand by his bread-winner.--And so, Mysie, ye may doff your cloak since our neighbour is so kindly glad to see us--why, I think, we are as blithe to see her--not one in the Halidome pays their multures more duly, sequels, arriage, and carriage, and mill-services, used and wont.”

With that the Miller hung his ample cloak without farther ceremony upon a huge pair of stag's antlers, which adorned at once the naked walls of the tower, and served for what we vulgarly call cloak-pins.

In the meantime Dame Elspeth assisted to disembarrass the damsel whom she destined for her future daughter-in-law, of her hood, mantle, and the rest of her riding gear, giving her to appear as beseemed the buxom daughter of the wealthy Miller, gay and goodly, in a white kirtle, the seams of which were embroidered with green silken lace or fringe, entwined with some silver thread. An anxious glance did Elspoth cast upon the good-humoured face, which was now more fully shown to her, and was only obscured by a quantity of raven black hair, which the maid of the mill had restrained by a snood of green silk, embroidered with silver, corresponding to the trimmings of her kirtle. The countenance itself was exceedingly comely--the eyes black, large, and roguishly good-humoured--the mouth was small--the lips well formed, though somewhat full--the teeth were pearly white--and the chin had a very seducing dimple in it. The form belonging to this joyous face was full and round, and firm and fair. It might become coarse and masculine some years hence, which is the common fault of Scottish beauty; but in Mysie's sixteenth year she had the shape of a Hebe. The anxious Elspeth, with all her maternal partiality, could not help admitting within herself, that a better man than Halbert might go farther and fare worse. She looked a little giddy, and Halbert was not nineteen; still it was time he should be settled, for to that point the dame always returned; and here was an excellent opportunity.

The simple cunning of Dame Elspeth now exhausted itself in commendations of her fair guest, from the snood, as they say, to the single-soled shoe. Mysie listened and blushed with pleasure for the first five minutes; but ere ten had elapsed, she began to view the old lady's compliments rather as subjects of mirth than of vanity, and was much more disposed to laugh at than to be flattered with them, for Nature had mingled the good-humour with which she had endowed the damsel with no small portion of shrewdness. Even Hob himself began to tire of hearing his daughter's praises, and broke in with, “Ay, ay, she is a clever quean enough; and, were she five years older, she shall lay a loaded sack on an _aver_ [Note: _Aver_--properly a horse of labour.] with e'er a lass in the Halidome. But I have been looking for your two sons, dame. Men say downby that Halbert's turned a wild springald, and that we may have word of him from Westmoreland one moonlight night or another.”

“God forbid, my good neighbour; God, in his mercy, forbid!” said Dame Glendinning, earnestly; for it was touching the very key-note of her apprehensions, to hint any probability that Halbert might become one of the marauders so common in the age and country. But, fearful of having betrayed too much alarm on this subject, she immediately added, “That though, since the last rout at Pinkiecleuch, she had been all of a tremble when a gun or a spear was named, or when men spoke of fighting; yet, thanks to God and our Lady, her sons were like to live and die honest and peaceful tenants to the Abbey, as their father might have done, but for that awful hosting which he went forth to with mony a brave man that never returned.”

“Ye need not tell me of it, dame,” said the Miller, “since I was there myself, and made two pair of legs (and these were not mine, but my mare's,) worth one pair of hands. I judged how it would be, when I saw our host break ranks, with rushing on through that broken ploughed field, and so as they had made a pricker of me, I e'en pricked off with myself while the play was good.”

“Ay, ay, neighbour,” said the dame, “ye were aye a wise and a wary man; if my Simon had had your wit, he might have been here to speak about it this day; but he was aye cracking of his good blood and his high kindred, and less would not serve him than to bide the bang to the last, with the earls, and knights, and squires, that had no wives to greet for them, or else had wives that cared not how soon they were widows; but that is not for the like of us. But touching my son Halbert, there is no fear of him; for if it should be his misfortune to be in the like case, he has the best pair of heels in Halidome, and could run almost as fast as your mare herself.”

“Is this he, neighbour?” quoth the Miller.

“No,” replied the mother; “that is my youngest son, Edward, who can read and write like the Lord Abbot himself, if it were not a sin to say so.”

“Ay,” said the Miller; “and is that the young clerk the Sub-Prior thinks so much of? they say he will come far ben that lad; wha kens but he may come to be Sub-Prior himself?--as broken a ship has come to land.”

“To be a Prior, neighbour Miller,” said Edward, “a man must first be a priest, and for that I judge I have little vocation.”

“He will take to the pleugh-pettle, neighbour,” said the good dame; “and so will Halbert too, I trust. I wish you saw Halbert.--Edward, where is your brother?”

“Hunting, I think,” replied Edward; “at least he left us this morning to join the Laird of Colmslie and his hounds. I have heard them baying in the glen all day.”

“And if I had heard that music,” said the Miller, “it would have done my heart good, ay, and may be taken me two or three miles out of my road. When I was the Miller of Morebattle's knave, I have followed the hounds from Eckford to the foot of Hounam-law--followed them on foot, Dame Glendinning, ay, and led the chase when the Laird of Cessford and his gay riders were all thrown out by the mosses and gills. I brought the stag on my back to Hounam Cross, when the dogs had pulled him down. I think I see the old gray knight, as he sate so upright on his strong war-horse, all white with foam; and 'Miller,' said he to me, 'an thou wilt turn thy back on the mill, and wend with me, I will make a man of thee.' But I chose rather to abide by clap and happer, and the better luck was mine; for the proud Percy caused hang five of the Laird's henchmen at Alnwick for burning a rickle of houses some gate beyond Fowberry, and it might have been my luck as well as another man's.”

“Ah, neighbour, neighbour,” said Dame Glendinning, “you were aye wise and wary; but if you like hunting, I must say Halbert's the lad to please you. He hath all those fair holiday terms of hawk and hound as ready in his mouth as Tom with the tod's tail, that is the Lord Abbot's ranger.”

“Ranges he not homeward at dinner-time, dame,” demanded the Miller; “for we call noon the dinner-hour at Kennaquhair?”

The widow was forced to admit that, even at this important period of the day, Halbert was frequently absent; at which the Miller shook his head, intimating, at the same time, some allusion to the proverb of MacFarlane's geese, which “liked their play better than their meat.” [Footnote: A brood of wild-geese, which long frequented one of the uppermost islands in Loch-Lomond, called Inch-Tavoe, were supposed to have some mysterious connexion with the ancient family of MacFarlane of that ilk, and it is said were never seen after the ruin and extinction of that house. The MacFarlanes had a house and garden upon that same island of Inch-Tavoe. Here James VI. was, on one occasion, regaled by the chieftain. His Majesty had been previously much amused by the geese pursuing each other on the Loch. But, when one which was brought to table, was found to be tough and ill fed, James observed--“that MacFarlane's geese liked their play better than their meat,” a proverb which has been current ever since.]

That the delay of dinner might not increase the Miller's disposition to prejudge Halbert, Dame Glendinning called hastily on Mary Avenel to take her task of entertaining Mysie Happer, while she herself rushed to the kitchen, and, entering at once into the province of Tibb Tacket, rummaged among trenchers and dishes, snatched pots from the fire, and placed pans and gridirons on it, accompanying her own feats of personal activity with such a continued list of injunctions to Tibb, that Tibb at length lost patience, and said, “Here was as muckle wark about meating an auld miller, as if they had been to banquet the blood of Bruce.” But this, as it was supposed to be spoken aside, Dame Glendinning did not think it convenient to hear.

* * * * *

Chapter the Fourteenth.

Nay, let me have the friends who eat my victuals, As various as my dishes.--The feast's naught, Where one huge plate predominates. John Plaintext, He shall be mighty beef, our English staple; The worthy Alderman, a butter'd dumpling; Yon pair of whisker'd Cornets, ruffs and rees: Their friend the Dandy, a green goose in sippets. And so the hoard is spread at once and fill'd On the same principle--Variety. NEW PLAY.

“And what brave lass is this?” said Hob Miller, as Mary Avenel entered the apartment to supply the absence of Dame Elspeth Glendinning.

“The young Lady of Avenel, father,” said the Maid of the Mill, dropping as low a curtsy as her rustic manners enabled her to make. The Miller, her father, doffed his bonnet, and made his reverence, not altogether so low perhaps as if the young lady had appeared in the pride of rank and riches, yet so as to give high birth the due homage which the Scotch for a length of time scrupulously rendered to it.

Indeed, from having had her mother's example before her for so many years, and from a native sense of propriety and even of dignity, Mary Avenel had acquired a demeanour, which marked her title to consideration, and effectually checked any attempt at familiarity on the part of those who might be her associates in her present situation, but could not be well termed her equals. She was by nature mild, pensive, and contemplative, gentle in disposition, and most placable when accidentally offended; but still she was of a retired and reserved habit, and shunned to mix in ordinary sports, even--when the rare occurrence of a fair or wake gave her an opportunity of mingling with companions of her own age. If at such scenes she was seen for an instant, she appeared to behold them with the composed indifference of one to whom their gaiety was a matter of no interest, and who seemed only desirous to glide away from the scene as soon as she possibly could.

Something also had transpired concerning her being born on All-hallow Eve, and the powers with which that circumstance was supposed to invest her over the invisible world. And from all-these particulars combined, the young men and women of the Halidome used to distinguish Mary among themselves by the name of the Spirit of Avenel, as if the fair but fragile form, the beautiful but rather colourless cheek, the dark blue eye, and the shady hair, had belonged rather to the immaterial than the substantial world. The general tradition of the White Lady, who was supposed to wait on the fortunes of the family of Avenel, gave a sort of zest to this piece of rural wit. It gave great offence, however, to the two sons of Simon Glendinning; and when the expression was in their presence applied to the young lady, Edward was wont to check the petulance of those who used it by strength of argument, and Halbert by strength of arm. In such cases Halbert had this advantage, that although ho could render no aid to his brother's argument, yet when circumstances required it, he was sure to have that of Edward, who never indeed himself commenced a fray, but, on the other hand, did not testify any reluctance to enter into combat in Halbert's behalf or in his rescue.

But the zealous attachment of the two youths, being themselves, from the retired situation in which they dwelt, comparative strangers in the Halidome, did not serve in any degree to alter the feelings of the inhabitants towards the young lady, who seemed to have dropped amongst them from another sphere of life. Still, however, she was regarded with respect, if not with fondness; and the attention of the Sub-Prior to the family, not to mention the formidable name of Julian Avenel, which every new incident of those tumultuous times tended to render more famous, attached to his niece a certain importance. Thus some aspired to her acquaintance out of pride while the more timid of the feuars were anxious to inculcate upon their children the necessity of being respectful to the noble orphan. So that Mary Avenel, little loved because little known, was regarded with a mysterious awe, partly derived from fear of her uncle's moss-troopers, and partly from her own retired and distant habits, enhanced by the superstitious opinions of the time and country.

It was not without some portion of this awe, that Mysie felt herself left alone in company with a young person so distant in rank, and so different in bearing, from herself; for her worthy father had taken the first opportunity to step out unobserved, in order to mark how the barnyard was filled, and what prospect it afforded of grist to the mill. In youth, however, there is a sort of free-masonry, which, without much conversation, teaches young persons to estimate each other's character, and places them at ease on the shortest acquaintance. It is only when taught deceit by the commerce of the world, that we learn to shroud our character from observation, and to disguise our real sentiments from those with whom we are placed in communion.

Accordingly, the two young women were soon engaged in such objects of interest as best became their age. They visited Mary Avenel's pigeons, which she nursed with the tenderness of a mother; they turned over her slender stores of finery, which yet contained some articles that excited the respect of her companion, though Mysie was too good-humoured to nourish envy. A golden rosary, and some female ornaments marking superior rank, had been rescued in the moment of their utmost adversity, more by Tibb Tacket's presence of mind, than by the care of their owner,--who was at that sad period too much sunk in grief to pay any attention to such circumstances. They struck Mysie with a deep impression of veneration; for, excepting what the Lord Abbot and the convent might possess, she did not believe there was so much real gold in the world as was exhibited in these few trinkets, and Mary, however sage and serious, was not above being pleased with the admiration of her rustic companion.

Nothing, indeed, could exhibit a stronger contrast than the appearance of the two girls;--the good-humoured laughter-loving countenance of the Maid of the Mill, who stood gazing with unrepressed astonishment on whatever was in her inexperienced eye rare and costly, and with an humble, and at the same time cheerful acquiescence in her inferiority, asking all the little queries about the use and value of the ornaments, while Mary Avenel, with her quiet composed dignity and placidity of manner, produced them one after another for the amusement of her companion.

As they became gradually more familiar, Mysie of the Mill was just venturing to ask, why Mary Avenel never appeared at the May-pole, and to express her wonder when the young lady said she disliked dancing, when a trampling of horses at the gate of the tower interrupted their conversation.

Mysie flew to the shot-window in the full ardour of unrestrained female curiosity. “Saint Mary! sweet lady! here come two well-mounted gallants; will you step this way to look at them ?”

“No,” said Mary Avenel, “you shall tell me who they are.”

“Well, if you like it better,” said Mysie--“but how shall I know them?---Stay, I do know one of them, and so do you, lady; he is a blithe man, somewhat light of hand, they say, but the gallants of these days think no great harm of that. He is your uncle's henchman, that they call Christie of the Clinthill; and he has not his old green jerkin and the rusty blackjack over it, but a scarlet cloak, laid down with silver lace three inches broad, and a breast-plate you might see to dress your hair in, as well as in that keeking-glass in the ivory frame that you showed me even now. Come, dear lady, come to the shot-window and see him.”

“If it be the man you mean, Mysie,” replied the orphan of Avenel, “I shall see him soon enough, considering either the pleasure or comfort the sight will give me.”

“Nay, but if you will not come to see gay Christie,” replied the Maid of the Mill, her face flushed with eager curiosity, “come and tell me who the gallant is that is with him, the handsomest, the very lovesomest young man I ever saw with sight.”

“It is my foster-brother, Halbert Glendinning,” said Mary, with, apparent indifference; for she had been accustomed to call the sons of Elspeth her foster-brethren, and to live with them as if they had been brothers in earnest.

“Nay, by Our Lady, that it is not,” said Mysie; “I know the favour of both the Glendinnings well, and I think this rider be not of our country. He has a crimson velvet bonnet, and long brown hair falling down under it, and a beard on his upper lip, and his chin clean and close shaved, save a small patch on the point of the chin, and a sky-blue jerkin slashed and lined with white satin, and trunk-hose to suit, and no weapon but a rapier and dagger--Well, if I was a man, I would never wear weapon but the rapier! it is so slender and becoming, instead of having a cartload of iron at my back, like my father's broad-sword with its great rusty basket-hilt. Do you not delight in the rapier and poniard, lady?”

“The best sword,” answered Mary, “if I must needs answer a question of the sort, is that which is drawn in the best cause, and which is best used when it is out of the scabbard.”

“But can you not guess who this stranger should be?” said Mysie.

“Indeed, I cannot even attempt it; but to judge by his companion, it is no matter how little he is known,” replied Mary.

“My benison on his bonny face,” said Mysie, “if he is not going to alight here! Now, I am as much pleased as if my father had given me the silver earrings he has promised me so often;--nay, you had as well come to the window, for you must see him by and by whether you will or not.” I do not know how much sooner Mary Avenel might have sought the point of observation, if she had not been scared from it by the unrestrained curiosity expressed by her buxom friend; but at length the same feeling prevailed over her sense of dignity, and satisfied with having displayed all the indifference that was necessary in point of decorum, she no longer thought herself bound to restrain her curiosity.

From the outshot or projecting window, she could perceive that Christie of the Clinthill was attended on the present occasion by a very gay and gallant cavalier, who, from the nobleness of his countenance and manner, his rich and handsome dress, and the showy appearance of his horse and furniture, must, she agreed with her new friend, be a person of some consequence.

Christie also seemed conscious of something, which made him call out with more than his usual insolence of manner, “What, ho! so ho! the house! Churl peasants, will no one answer when I call?--Ho! Martin,--Tibb,--Dame Glendinning--a murrain on you, must we stand keeping our horses in the cold here, and they steaming with heat, when we have ridden so sharply?”

At length he was obeyed, and old Martin made his appearance. “Ha!” said Christie, “art thou there, old Truepenny? here, stable me these steeds, and see them well bedded, and stretch thine old limbs by rubbing them down; and see thou quit not the stable till there is not a turned hair on either of them.”

Martin took the horses to the stable as commanded, but suppressed not his indignation a moment after he could vent it with safety. “Would not any one think,” he said to Jasper, an old ploughman, who, in coming to his assistance, had heard Christie's imperious injunctions, “that this loon, this Christie of the Clinthill, was laird or lord at least of him? No such thing, man! I remember him a little dirty turnspit boy in the house of Avenel, that every body in a frosty morning like this warmed his fingers by kicking or cuffing! and now he is a gentleman, and swears, d--n him and renounce him, as if the gentlemen could not so much as keep their own wickedness to themselves, without the like of him going to hell in their very company, and by the same road. I have as much a mind as ever I had to my dinner, to go back and tell him to sort his horse himself, since he is as able as I am.”

“Hout tout, man!” answered Jasper, “keep a calm sough; better to fleech a fool than fight with him.”

Martin acknowledged the truth of the proverb, and, much comforted therewith, betook himself to cleaning the stranger's horse with great assiduity, remarking, it was a pleasure to handle a handsome nag, and turned over the other to the charge of Jasper. Nor was it until Christie's commands were literally complied with that he deemed it proper, after fitting ablutions, to join the party in the spence; not for the purpose of waiting upon them, as a mere modern reader might possibly expect, but that he might have his share of dinner in their company.

In the meanwhile, Christie had presented his companion to Dame Glendinning as Sir Piercie Shafton, a friend of his and of his master, come to spend three or four days with little din in the tower. The good dame could not conceive how she was entitled to such an honour, and would fain have pleaded her want of every sort of convenience to entertain a guest of that quality. But, indeed, the visiter, when he cast his eyes round the bare walls, eyed the huge black chimney, scrutinized the meagre and broken furniture of the apartment, and beheld the embarrassment of the mistress of the family, intimated great reluctance to intrude upon Dame Glendinning a visit, which could scarce, from all appearances, prove otherwise than an inconvenience to her, and a penance to himself.

But the reluctant hostess and her guest had to do with an inexorable man, who silenced all expostulations with, “such was his master's pleasure. And, moreover,” he continued, “though the Baron of Avenel's will must, and ought to prove law to all within ten miles around him, yet here, dame,” he said, “is a letter from your petticoated baron, the lord-priest yonder, who enjoins you, as you regard his pleasure, that you afford to this good knight such decent accommodation as is in your power, suffering him to live as privately as he shall desire.--And for you, Sir Piercie Shafton,” continued Christie, “you will judge for yourself, whether secrecy and safety is not more your object even now, than soft beds and high cheer. And do not judge of the dame's goods by the semblance of her cottage; for you will see by the dinner she is about to spread for us, that the vassal of the kirk is seldom found with her basket bare.” To Mary Avenel, Christie presented the stranger, after the best fashion he could, as to the niece of his master the baron.

While he thus laboured to reconcile Sir Piercie Shafton to his fate, the widow, having consulted her son Edward on the real import of the Lord Abbot's injunction, and having found that Christie had given a true exposition, saw nothing else left for her but to make that fate as easy as she could to the stranger. He himself also seemed reconciled to his lot by some feeling probably of strong necessity, and accepted with a good grace the hospitality which the dame offered with a very indifferent one.

In fact, the dinner, which soon smoked before the assembled guests, was of that substantial kind which warrants plenty and comfort. Dame Glendinning had cooked it after her best manner; and, delighted with the handsome appearance which her good cheer made when placed on the table, forgot both her plans and the vexations which interrupted them, in the hospitable duty of pressing her assembled visiters to eat and drink, watching every trencher as it waxed empty, and loading it with fresh supplies ere the guest could utter a negative.

In the meanwhile, the company attentively regarded each other's motions, and seemed endeavouring to form a judgment of each other's character. Sir Piercie Shafton condescended to speak to no one but to Mary Avenel, and on her he conferred exactly the same familiar and compassionate, though somewhat scornful sort of attention, which a pretty fellow of these days will sometimes condescend to bestow on a country miss, when there is no prettier or more fashionable woman present. The manner indeed was different, for the etiquette of those times did not permit Sir Piercie Shafton to pick his teeth, or to yawn, or to gabble like the beggar whose tongue (as he says) was cut out by the Turks, or to affect deafness or blindness, or any other infirmity of the organs. But though the embroidery of his conversation was different, the groundwork was the same, and the high-flown and ornate compliments with which the gallant knight of the sixteenth century inter-larded his conversation, were as much the offspring of egotism and self-conceit, as the jargon of the coxcombs of our own days.

The English knight was, however, something daunted at finding that Mary Avenel listened with an air of indifference, and answered with wonderful brevity, to all the fine things which ought, as he conceived, to have dazzled her with their brilliancy, and puzzled her by their obscurity. But if he was disappointed in making the desired, or rather the expected impression, upon her whom he addressed, Sir Piercie Shafton's discourse was marvellous in the ears of Mysie the Miller's daughter, and not the less so that she did not comprehend the meaning of a single word which he uttered. Indeed, the gallant knight's language was far too courtly to be understood by persons of much greater acuteness than Mysie's.

It was about this period, that the “only rare poet of his time, the witty, comical, facetiously-quick, and quickly-facetious, John Lylly--he that sate at Apollo's table, and to whom Phoebus gave a wreath of his own bays without snatching” [Footnote: Such, and yet more extravagant, are the compliments paid to this author by his editor, Blount. Notwithstanding all exaggeration, Lylly was really a man of wit and imagination, though both were deformed by the most unnatural affectation that ever disgraced a printed page.]--he, in short, who wrote that singularly coxcomical work, called _Euphues and his England_, was in the very zenith of his absurdity and his reputation. The quaint, forced, and unnatural style which he introduced by his “Anatomy of Wit,” had a fashion as rapid as it was momentary--all the court ladies were his scholars, and to _parler Euphuisme_, was as necessary a qualification to a courtly gallant, as those of understanding how to use his rapier, or to dance a measure.

It was no wonder that the Maid of the Mill was soon as effectually blinded by the intricacies of this erudite and courtly style of conversation, as she had ever been by the dust of her father's own meal-sacks. But there she sate with her mouth and eyes as open as the mill-door and the two windows, showing teeth as white as her father's bolted flour, and endeavouring to secure a word or two for her own future use out of the pearls of rhetoric which Sir Piercie Shafton scattered around him with such bounteous profusion.

For the male part of the company, Edward felt ashamed of his own manner and slowness of speech, when he observed the handsome young courtier, with an ease and volubility of which he had no conception, run over all the commonplace topics of high-flown gallantry. It is true the good sense and natural taste of young Glendinning soon informed him that the gallant cavalier was speaking nonsense. But, alas! where is the man of modest merit, and real talent, who has not suffered from being outshone in conversation and outstripped in the race of life, by men of less reserve, and of qualities more showy, though less substantial? and well constituted must the mind be, that can yield up the prize without envy to competitors more worthy than himself.

Edward Glendinning had no such philosophy. While he despised the jargon of the gay cavalier, he envied the facility with which he could run on, as well as the courtly tone and expression, and the perfect ease and elegance with which he offered all the little acts of politeness to which the duties of the table gave opportunity. And if I am to speak truth, I must own that he envied those qualities the more as they were all exercised in Mary Avenel's service, and, although only so far accepted as they could not be refused, intimated a wish on the stranger's part to place himself in her good graces, as the only person in the room to whom he thought it worth while to recommend himself. His title, rank, and very handsome figure, together with some sparks of wit and spirit which flashed across the cloud of nonsense which he uttered, rendered him, as the words of the old song say, “a lad for a lady's viewing;” so that poor Edward, with all his real worth and acquired knowledge, in his home-spun doublet, blue cap, and deerskin trowsers, looked like a clown beside the courtier, and, feeling the full inferiority, nourished no good-will to him by whom he was eclipsed.

Christie, on the other hand, as soon as he had satisfied to the full a commodious appetite, by means of which persons of his profession could, like the wolf and eagle, gorge themselves with as much food at one meal as might serve them for several days, began also to feel himself more in the back-ground than he liked to be. This worthy had, amongst his other good qualities, an excellent opinion of himself; and, being of a bold and forward disposition, had no mind to be thrown into the shade by any one. With an impudent familiarity which such persons mistake for graceful ease, he broke in upon the knight's finest speeches with as little remorse as he would have driven the point of his lance through a laced doublet. Sir Piercie Shafton, a man of rank and high birth, by no means encouraged or endured this familiarity, and requited the intruder either with total neglect, or such laconic replies as intimated a sovereign contempt for the rude spearman, who affected to converse with him upon terms of equality.

The Miller held his peace; for, as his usual conversation turned chiefly on his clapper and toll-dish, he had no mind to brag of his wealth in presence of Christie of the Clinthill, or to intrude his discourse on the English cavalier.

A little specimen of the conversation may not be out of place, were it but to show young ladies what fine things they have lost by living when Euphuism is out of fashion.

“Credit me, fairest lady,” said the knight, “that such is the cunning of our English courtiers, of the hodiernal strain, that, as they have infinitely refined upon the plain and rusticial discourse of our fathers, which, as I may say, more beseemed the mouths of country roisterers in a May-game than that of courtly gallants in a galliard, so I hold it ineffably and unutterably impossible, that those who may succeed us in that garden of wit and courtesy shall alter or amend it. Venus delighted but in the language of Mercury, Bucephalus will stoop to no one but Alexander, none can sound Apollo's pipe but Orpheus.”

“Valiant sir,” said Mary, who could scarcely help laughing, “we have but to rejoice in the chance which hath honoured this solitude with a glimpse of the sun of courtesy, though it rather blinds than enlightens us.”

“Pretty and quaint, fairest lady,” answered the Euphuist. “Ah, that I had with me my Anatomy of Wit--that all-to-be-unparalleled volume--that quintessence of human wit--that treasury of quaint invention--that exquisitively-pleasant-to-read, and inevitably-necessary-to-be-remembered manual, of all that is worthy to be known--which indoctrines the rude in civility, the dull in intellectuality, the heavy in jocosity, the blunt in gentility, the vulgar in nobility, and all of them in that unutterable perfection, of human utterance, that eloquence which no other eloquence is sufficient to praise, that art which, when we call it by its own name of Euphuism, we bestow on it its richest panegyric.”

“By Saint Mary,” said Christie of the Clinthill, “if your worship had told me that you had left such stores of wealth as you talk of at Prudhoe Castle, Long Dickie and I would have had them off with us if man and horse could have carried them; but you told us of no treasure I wot of, save the silver tongs for turning up your mustachoes.”

The knight treated this intruder's mistake--for certainly Christie had no idea that all these epithets which sounded so rich and splendid, were lavished upon a small quarto volume--with a stare, and then turning again to Mary Avenel, the only person whom he thought worthy to address, he proceeded in his strain of high-flown oratory, “Even thus,” said he, “do hogs contemn the splendour of Oriental pearls; even thus are the delicacies of a choice repast in vain offered to the long-eared grazer of the common, who turneth from them to devour a thistle. Surely as idle is it to pour forth the treasures of oratory before the eyes of the ignorant, and to spread the dainties of the intellectual banquet before those who are, morally and metaphysically speaking, no better than asses.”

“Sir Knight, since that is your quality,” said Edward, “we cannot strive with you in loftiness of language; but I pray you in fair courtesy, while you honour my father's house with your presence, to spare us such vile comparisons.”

“Peace, good villagio,” said the knight, gracefully waving his hand, “I prithee peace, kind rustic; and you, my guide, whom I may scarce call honest, let me prevail upon you to imitate the laudable taciturnity of that honest yeoman, who sits as mute as a mill-post, and of that comely damsel, who seems as with her ears she drank in what she did not altogether comprehend, even as a palfrey listening to a lute, whereof, howsoever, he knoweth not the gamut.”

“Marvellous fine words,” at length said Dame Glendinning, who began to be tired of sitting so long silent, “marvellous fine words, neighbour Happer, are they not?”

“Brave words--very brave words--very exceeding pyet words,” answered the Miller; “nevertheless, to speak my mind, a lippy of bran were worth a bushel of them.”

“I think so too, under his worship's favour,” answered Christie of the Clinthill. “I well remember that at the race of Morham, as we call it, near Berwick, I took a young Southern fellow out of saddle with my lance, and cast him, it might be, a gad's length from his nag; and so, as he had some gold on his laced doublet, I deemed he might ha' the like on it in his pocket too, though that is a rule that does not aye hold good--So I was speaking to him of ransom, and out he comes with a handful of such terms as his honour there hath gleaned up, and craved me for mercy, as I was a true son of Mars, and such like.”

“And obtained no mercy at thy hand, I dare be sworn,” said the knight, who deigned not to speak Euphuism excepting to the fair sex.

“By my troggs,” replied Christie, “I would have thrust my lance down his throat, but just then they flung open that accursed postern-gate, and forth pricked old Hunsdon, and Henry Carey, and as many fellows at their heels as turned the chase northward again. So I e'en pricked Bayard with the spur, and went off with the rest; for a man should ride when he may not wrestle, as they say in Tynedale.”

“Trust me,” said the knight, again turning to Mary Avenel, “if I do not pity you, lady, who, being of noble blood, are thus in a manner compelled to abide in the cottage of the ignorant, like the precious stone in the head of the toad, or like a precious garland on the brow of an ass.--But soft, what gallant have we here, whose garb savoureth more of the rustic than doth his demeanour, and whose looks seem more lofty than his habit; even as--”

“I pray you, Sir Knight,” said Mary, “to spare your courtly similitudes for refined ears, and give me leave to name unto you my foster-brother, Halbert Glendinning.”

“The son of the good dame of the cottage, as I opine,” answered the English knight; “for by some such name did my guide discriminate the mistress of this mansion, which you, madam, enrich with your presence.--And yet, touching this juvenal, he hath that about him which belongeth to higher birth, for all are not black who dig coals--”

“Nor all white who are millers,” said honest Happer, glad to get in a word, as they say, edgeways.

Halbert, who had sustained the glance of the Englishman with some impatience, and knew not what to make of his manner and language, replied with some asperity, “Sir Knight, we have in this land of Scotland an ancient saying, 'Scorn not the bush that bields you'--you are a guest of my father's house to shelter you from danger, if I am rightly informed by the domestics. Scoff not its homeliness, nor that of its inmates--ye might long have abidden at the court of England, ere we had sought your favour, or cumbered you with our society. Since your fate has sent you hither amongst us, be contented with such fare and such converse as we can afford you, and scorn us not for our kindness; for the Scots wear short patience and long daggers.”

All eyes were turned on Halbert while he was thus speaking, and there was a general feeling that his countenance had an expression of intelligence, and his person an air of dignity, which they had never before observed. Whether it were that the wonderful Being with whom he had so lately held communication, had bestowed on him a grace and dignity of look and bearing which he had not before, or whether the being conversant in high matters, and called to a destiny beyond that of other men, had a natural effect in giving becoming confidence to his language and manner, we pretend not to determine. But it was evident to all, that, from this day, young Halbert was an altered man; that he acted with the steadiness, promptitude, and determination, which belonged to riper years, and bore himself with a manner which appertained to higher rank.

The knight took the rebuke with good humour. “By my mine honour,” he said, “thou hast reason on thy side, good juvenal--nevertheless, I spoke not as in ridicule of the roof which relieves me, but rather in your own praise, to whom, if this roof be native, thou mayst nevertheless rise from its lowliness; even as the lark, which maketh its humble nest in the furrow, ascendeth towards the sun, as well as the eagle which buildeth her eyry in the cliff.”

This high-flown discourse was interrupted by Dame Glendinning, who, with all the busy anxiety of a mother, was loading her son's trencher with food, and dinning in his ear her reproaches on account of his prolonged absence. “And see,” she said, “that you do not one day get such a sight while you are walking about among the haunts of them that are not of our flesh and bone, as befell Mungo Murray when he slept on the greensward ring of the Auld Kirkhill at sunset, and wakened at daybreak in the wild hills of Breadalbane. And see that, when you are looking for deer, the red stag does not gall you as he did Diccon Thorburn, who never overcast the wound that he took from a buck's horn. And see, when you go swaggering about with a long broadsword by your side, whilk it becomes no peaceful man to do, that you dinna meet with them that have broadsword and lance both--there are enow of rank riders in this land, that neither fear God nor regard man.”

Here her eye “in a fine frenzy rolling,” fell full upon that of Christie of the Clinthill, and at once her fears for having given offence interrupted the current of maternal rebuke, which, like rebuke matrimonial, may be often better meant than timed. There was something of sly and watchful significance in Christie's eye, an eye gray, keen, fierce, yet wily, formed to express at once cunning, and malice, which made the dame instantly conjecture she had said too much, while she saw in imagination her twelve goodly cows go lowing down the glen in a moonlight night, with half a score of Border spearsmen at their heels.

Her voice, therefore, sunk from the elevated tone of maternal authority into a whimpering apologetic sort of strain, and she proceeded to say, “It is no that I have ony ill thoughts of the Border riders, for Tibb Tacket there has often heard me say that I thought spear and bridle as natural to a Borderman as a pen to a priest, or a feather-fan to a lady; and--have you not heard me say it, Tibb?”

Tibb showed something less than her expected alacrity in attesting her mistress's deep respect for the freebooters of the southland hills; but, thus conjured, did at length reply, “Hout ay, mistress, I'se warrant I have heard you say something like that.”

“Mother!” said Halbert, in a firm and commanding tone of voice, “what or whom is it that you fear under my father's roof?--I well hope that it harbours not a guest in whose presence you are afraid to say your pleasure to me or my brother? I am sorry I have been detained so late, being ignorant of the fair company which I should encounter on my return.--I pray you let this excuse suffice: and what satisfies you, will, I trust, be nothing less than acceptable to your guests.”

An answer calculated so jistly betwixt the submission due to his parent, and the natural feeling of dignity in one who was by birth master of the mansion, excited universal satisfaction. And as Elspeth herself confessed to Tibb on the same evening, “She did not think it had been in the callant. Till that night, he took pets and passions if he was spoke to, and lap through the house like a four-year-auld at the least word of advice that was minted at him, but now he spoke as grave and as douce as the Lord Abbot himself. She kendna,” she said, “what might be the upshot of it, but it was like he was a wonderfu' callant even now.”

The party then separated, the young men retiring to their apartments, the elder to their household cares. While Christie went to see his horse properly accommodated, Edward betook himself to his book, and Halbert, who was as ingenious in employing his hands as he had hitherto appeared imperfect in mental exertion, applied himself to constructing a place of concealment in the floor of his apartment by raising a plank, beneath which he resolved to deposit that copy of the Holy Scriptures which had been so strangely regained from the possession of men and spirits.

In the meanwhile Sir Piercie Shafton sate still as a stone, in the chair in which he had deposited himself, his hands folded on his breast, his legs stretched straight out before him and resting upon the heels, his eyes cast up to the ceiling as if he had meant to count every mesh of every cobweb with which the arched roof was canopied, wearing at the same time a face of as solemn and imperturbable gravity, as if his existence had depended on the accuracy of his calculation.

He could scarce be roused from his listless state of contemplative absorption so as to take some supper, a meal at which the younger females appeared not. Sir Piercie stared around twice or thrice as if he missed something; but he asked not for them, and only evinced his sense of a proper audience being wanting, by his abstraction and absence of mind, seldom speaking until he was twice addressed, and then replying, without trope or figure, in that plain English which nobody could speak better when he had a mind.

Christie, finding himself in undisturbed possession of the conversation, indulged all who chose to listen with details of his own wild and inglorious warfare, while Dame Elspeth's curch bristled with horror, and Tibb Tacket, rejoiced to find herself once more in the company of a jackman, listened to his tales, like Desdemona to Othello's, with undisguised delight. Meantime the two young Glendinnings were each wrapped up in his own reflections, and only interrupted in them by the signal to move bedward.

* * * * *

Chapter the Fifteenth.

He strikes no coin, 'tis true, but coins new phrases, And vends them forth as knaves vend gilded counters, Which wise men scorn, and fools accept in payment. OLD PLAY.

In the morning Christie of the Clinthill was nowhere to be seen. As this worthy personage did seldom pique himself on sounding a trumpet before his movements, no one was surprised at his moonlight departure, though some alarm was excited lest he had not made it empty-handed. So, in the language of the national ballad,

Some ran to cupboard, and some to kist, But nought was away that could be mist.

All was in order, the key of the stable left above the door, and that of the iron-grate in the inside of the lock. In short, the retreat had been made with scrupulous attention to the security of the garrison, and so far Christie left them nothing to complain of.

The safety of the premises was ascertained by Halbert, who instead of catching up a gun or cross-bow, and sallying out for the day as had been his frequent custom, now, with a gravity beyond his years, took a survey of all around the tower, and then returned to the spence, or public apartment, in which, at the early hour of seven, the morning meal was prepared.

There he found the Euphuist in the same elegant posture of abstruse calculation which he had exhibited on the preceding evening, his arms folded in the same angle, his eyes turned up to the same cobwebs, and his heels resting on the ground as before. Tired of this affectation of indolent importance, and not much flattered with his guest's persevering in it to the last, Halbert resolved at once to break the ice, being determined to know what circumstance had brought to the tower of Glendinning a guest at once so supercilious and so silent.

“Sir Knight,” he said with some firmness, “I have twice given you good morning, to which the absence of your mind hath, I presume, prevented you from yielding attention, or from making return. This exchange of courtesy is at your pleasure to give or withhold--But, as what I have further to say concerns your comfort and your motions in an especial manner, I will entreat you to give me some signs of attention, that I may be sure I am not wasting my words on a monumental image.”

At this unexpected address, Sir Piercie Shafton opened his eyes, and afforded the speaker a broad stare; but as Halbert returned the glance without either confusion or dismay, the knight thought proper to change his posture, draw in his legs, raise his eyes, fix them on young Glendinning, and assume the appearance of one who listens to what is said to him. Nay, to make his purpose more evident, he gave voice to his resolution in these words, “Speak! we do hear.”

“Sir Knight,” said the youth, “it is the custom of this Halidome, or patrimony of St. Mary's, to trouble with inquiries no guests who receive our hospitality, providing they tarry in our house only for a single revolution of the sun. We know that both criminals and debtors come hither for sanctuary, and we scorn to extort from the pilgrim, whom chance may make our guest, an avowal of the cause of his pilgrimage and penance. But when one so high above our rank as yourself, Sir Knight, and especially one to whom the possession of such pre-eminence is not indifferent, shows his determination to be our guest for a longer time, it is our usage to inquire of him whence he comes, and what is the cause of his journey?”

The English knight gaped twice or thrice before he answered, and then replied in a bantering tone, “Truly, good villagio, your question hath in it somewhat of embarrassment, for you ask me of things concerning which I am not as yet altogether determined what answer I may find it convenient to make. Let it suffice thee, kind juvenal, that thou hast the Lord Abbot's authority for treating me to the best of that power of thine, which, indeed, may not always so well suffice for my accommodation as either of us would desire.”

“I must have a more precise answer than this, Sir Knight,” said the young Glendinning.

“Friend,” said the knight, “be not outrageous. It may suit your northern manners thus to press harshly upon the secrets of thy betters; but believe me, that even as the lute, struck by an unskilful hand, doth produce discords, so----” At this moment the door of the apartment opened, and Mary Avenel presented herself--“But who can talk of discords,” said the knight, assuming his complimentary vein and humour, “when the soul of harmony descends upon us in the presence of surpassing beauty! For even as foxes, wolves, and other animals void of sense and reason, do fly from the presence of the resplendent sun of heaven when he arises in his glory, so do strife, wrath, and all ireful passions retreat, and, as it were, scud away, from the face which now beams upon us, with power to compose our angry passions, illuminate our errors and difficulties, soothe our wounded minds, and lull to rest our disorderly apprehensions; for as the heat and warmth of the eye of day is to the material and physical world, so is the eye which I now bow down before to that of the intellectual microcosm.”

He concluded with a profound bow; and Mary Avenel, gazing from one to the other, and plainly seeing that something was amiss, could only say, “For heaven's sake, what is the meaning of this?”

The newly-acquired tact and intelligence of her foster-brother was as yet insufficient to enable him to give an answer. He was quite uncertain how he ought to deal with a guest, who preserving a singularly high tone of assumed superiority and importance, seemed nevertheless so little serious in what he said, that it was quite impossible to discern with accuracy whether he was in jest or earnest.

Forming, however, the internal resolution to bring Sir Piercie Shafton to a reckoning at a more fit place and season, he resolved to prosecute the matter no farther at present; and the entrance of his mother with the damsel of the Mill, and the return of the honest Miller from the stack-yard, where he had been numbering and calculating the probable amount of the season's grist, rendered farther discussion impossible for the moment.

In the course of the calculation it could not but strike the man of meal and grindstones, that after the church's dues were paid, and after all which he himself could by any means deduct from the crop, still the residue which must revert to Dame Glendinning could not be less than considerable. I wot not if this led the honest Miller to nourish any plans similar to those adopted by Elspeth; but it is certain that he accepted with grateful alacrity an invitation which the dame gave to his daughter, to remain a week or two as her guest at Glendearg.

The principal persons being thus in high good humour with each other, all business gave place to the hilarity of the morning repast; and so much did Sir Piercie appear gratified by the attention which was paid to every word that he uttered by the nut-brown Mysie, that, notwithstanding his high birth and distinguished quality, he bestowed on her some of the more ordinary and second-rate tropes of his elocution.

Mary Avenel, when relieved from the awkwardness of feeling the full weight of his conversation addressed to herself, enjoyed it much more; and the good knight, encouraged by those conciliating marks of approbation from the sex, for whose sake he cultivated his oratorical talents, made speedy intimation of his purpose to be more communicative than he had shown himself in his conversation with Halbert Glendinning, and gave them to understand, that it was in consequence of some pressing danger that he was at present their involuntary guest.

The conclusion of the breakfast was a signal for the separation of the company. The Miller went to prepare for his departure; his daughter to arrange matters for her unexpected stay; Edward was summoned to consultation by Martin concerning some agricultural matter, in which Halbert could not be brought to interest himself; the dame left the room upon her household concerns, and Mary was in the act of following her, when she suddenly recollected, that if she did so, the strange knight and Halbert must be left alone together, at the risk of another quarrel.

The maiden no sooner observed this circumstance, than she instantly returned from the door of the apartment, and, seating herself in a small stone window-seat, resolved to maintain that curb which she was sensible her presence imposed on Halbert Glendinning, of whose quick temper she had some apprehensions.

The stranger marked her motions, and, either interpreting them as inviting his society, or obedient to those laws of gallantry which permitted him not to leave a lady in silence and solitude, he instantly placed himself near to her side and opened the conversation as follows:--

“Credit me, fair lady” he said, addressing Mary Avenel, “it much rejoiceth me, being, as I am, a banished man from the delights of mine own country, that I shall find here in this obscure and silvan cottage of the north, a fair form and a candid soul, with whom I may explain my mutual sentiments. And let me pray you in particular, lovely lady, that, according to the universal custom now predominant in our court, the garden of superior wits, you will exchange with me some epithet whereby you may mark my devotion to your service. Be henceforward named, for example, my Protection, and let me be your Affability.”

“Our northern and country manners, Sir Knight, do not permit us to exchange epithets with those to whom we are strangers,” replied Mary Avenel.

“Nay, but see now,” said the knight, “how you are startled! even as the unbroken steed, which swerves aside from the shaking of a handkerchief, though he must in time encounter the waving of a pennon. This courtly exchange of epithets of honour, is no more than the compliments which pass between valour and beauty, wherever they meet, and under whatever circumstances. Elizabeth of England herself calls Philip Sydney her Courage, and he in return calls that princess his Inspiration. Wherefore, my fair Protection, for by such epithet it shall be mine to denominate you--”

“Not without the young lady's consent, sir!” interrupted Halbert; “most truly do I hope your courtly and quaint breeding will not so far prevail over the more ordinary rules of civil behaviour.”

“Fair tenant of an indifferent copyhold,” replied the knight, with the same coolness and civility of mien, but in a tone somewhat more lofty than he used to the young lady, “we do not in the southern parts, much intermingle discourse, save with those with whom we may stand on some footing of equality; and I must, in all discretion, remind you, that the necessity which makes us inhabitants of the same cabin, doth not place us otherwise on a level with each other.”

“By Saint Mary,” replied young Glendinning, “it is my thought that it does; for plain men hold, that he who asks the shelter is indebted to him who gives it; and so far, therefore, is our rank equalized while this roof covers us both.”

“Thou art altogether deceived,” answered Sir Piercie; “and that thou mayst fully adapt thyself to our relative condition, know that I account not myself thy guest, but that of thy master, the Lord Abbot of Saint Mary's, who, for reasons best known to himself and me, chooseth to administer his hospitality to me through the means of thee, his servant and vassal, who art, therefore, in good truth, as passive an instrument of my accommodation as this ill-made and rugged joint-stool on which I sit, or as the wooden trencher from which I eat my coarse commons. Wherefore,” he added, turning to Mary, “fairest mistress, or rather, as I said before, most lovely Protection--” [Footnote: There are many instances to be met with in the ancient dramas of this whimsical and conceited custom of persons who formed an intimacy, distinguishing: each, other by some quaint epithet. In _Every Man out of his Humour_, there is a humorous debate upon names most fit to bind the relation betwixt Sogliardo and Cavaliero Shift, which ends by adopting those of Countenance and Resolution. What is more to the point is in the speech of Hedon, a voluptuary and a courtier in _Cynthia's Revels_. “you know that I call Madam Plilantia my _Honour,_ and she calls me her _Ambition._ Now, when I meet her in the presence, anon, I will come to her and say, 'Sweet Honour, I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, and now I will taste the roses of your lip.' To which she cannot but blushing answer, 'Nay, now you are too ambitious;' and then do I reply, 'I cannot be too ambitious of Honour, sweet lady. Wilt not be good?'”--I think there is some remnant of this foppery preserved in masonic lodges, where each brother is distinguished by a name in the Lodge, signifying some abstract quality as Discretion, or the like. See the poems of Gavin Wilson.]

Mary Avenel was about to reply to him, when the stern, fierce, and resentful expression of voice and countenance with which Halbert exclaimed, “not from the King of Scotland, did he live, would I brook such terms!” induced her to throw herself between him and the stranger, exclaiming, “for God's sake, Halbert, beware what you do!”

“Fear not, fairest Protection,” replied Sir Piercie, with the utmost serenity, “that I can be provoked by this rustical and mistaught juvenal to do aught misbecoming your presence or mine own dignity; for as soon shall the gunner's linstock give fire unto the icicle, as the spark of passion inflame my blood, tempered as it is to serenity by the respect due to the presence of my gracious Protection.”

“You may well call her your protection, Sir Knight” said Halbert; “by Saint Andrew, it is the only sensible word I have heard you speak! But we may meet where her protection shall no longer afford you shelter.”

“Fairest Protection,” continued the courtier, not even honouring with a look, far less with a direct reply, the threat of the incensed Halbert, “doubt not that thy faithful Affability will be more commoved by the speech of this rudesby, than the bright and serene moon is perturbed by the baying of the cottage-cur, proud of the height of his own dunghill, which, in his conceit, lifteth him nearer unto the majestic luminary.”

To what lengths so unsavoury a simile might have driven Halbert's indignation, is left uncertain; for at that moment Edward rushed into the apartment with the intelligence that two most important officers of the Convent, the Kitchener and Refectioner, were just arrived with a sumpter-mule, loaded with provisions, announcing that the Lord Abbot, the Sub-Prior, and the Sacristan, were on their way thither. A circumstance so very extraordinary had never been recorded in the annals of Saint Mary's, or in the traditions of Glendearg, though there was a faint legendary report that a certain Abbot had dined there in old days, after having been bewildered in a hunting expedition amongst the wilds which lie to the northward. But that the present Lord Abbot should have taken a voluntary journey to so wild and dreary a spot, the very Kamtschatka of the Halidome, was a thing never dreamt of; and the news excited the greatest surprise in all the members of the family saving Halbert alone.

This fiery youth was too full of the insult he had received to think of anything as unconnected with it. “I am glad of it,” he exclaimed; “I am glad the Abbot comes hither. I will know of him by what right this stranger is sent hither to domineer over us under our father's roof, as if we were slaves and not freemen. I will tell the proud priest to his beard--”

“Alas! alas! my brother,” said Edward, “think what these words may cost thee!”

“And what will, or what can they cost me,” said Halbert, “that I should sacrifice my human feelings and my justifiable resentment to the fear of what the Abbot can do?”

“Our mother--our mother!” exclaimed Edward; “think, if she is deprived of her home, expelled from her property, how can you amend what your rashness may ruin?”

“It is too true, by Heaven!” said Halbert, striking his forehead. Then, stamping his foot against the floor to express the full energy of the passion to which he dared no longer give vent, he turned round and left the apartment.

Mary Avenel looked at the stranger knight, while she was endeavouring to frame a request that he would not report the intemperate violence of her foster-brother to the prejudice of his family, in the mind of the Abbot. But Sir Piercie, the very pink of courtesy, conjectured her meaning from her embarrassment, and waited not to be entreated.

“Credit me, fairest Protection,” said he, “your Affability is less than capable of seeing or hearing, far less of reciting or reiterating, aught of an unseemly nature which may have chanced while I enjoyed the Elysium of your presence. The winds of idle passion may indeed rudely agitate the bosom of the rude; but the heart of the courtier is polished to resist them. As the frozen lake receives not the influence of the breeze, even so--”

The voice of Dame Glendinning, in shrill summons, here demanded Mary Avenel's attendance, who instantly obeyed, not a little glad to escape from the compliments and similes of this courtlike gallant. Nor was it apparently less a relief on his part; for no sooner was she past the threshold of the room, than he exchanged the look of formal and elaborate politeness which had accompanied each word he had uttered hitherto, for an expression of the utmost lassitude and ennui; and after indulging in one or two portentous yawns, broke forth into a soliloquy.

“What the foul fiend sent this wench hither? As if it were not sufficient plague to be harboured in a hovel that would hardly serve for a dog's kennel in England, baited by a rude peasant-boy, and dependent on the faith of a mercenary ruffian, but I cannot even have time to muse over my own mishap, but must come aloft, frisk, fidget, and make speeches, to please this pale hectic phantom, because she has gentle blood in her veins? By mine honour, setting prejudice aside, the mill-wench is the more attractive of the two--But patienza, Piercie Shafton; thou must not lose thy well-earned claim to be accounted a devout servant of the fair sex, a witty-brained, prompt, and accomplished courtier. Rather thank heaven, Piercie Shafton, which hath sent thee a subject, wherein, without derogating from thy rank, (since the honours of the Avenel family are beyond dispute,) thou mayest find a whetstone for thy witty compliments, a strop whereon to sharpen thine acute engine, a butt whereat to shoot the arrows of thy gallantry. For even as a Bilboa blade, the more it is rubbed, the brighter and the sharper will it prove, so--But what need I waste my stock of similitudes in holding converse with myself?--Yonder comes the monkish retinue, like some half score of crows winging their way slowly up the valley--I hope, a'gad, they have not forgotten my trunk-mails of apparel amid the ample provision they have made for their own belly-timber--Mercy, a'gad, I were finely helped up if the vesture has miscarried among the thievish Borderers!”

Stung by this reflection, he ran hastily down stairs, and caused his horse to be saddled, that he might, as soon as possible, ascertain this important point, by meeting the Lord Abbot and his retinue as they came up the glen. He had not ridden a mile before he met them advancing with the slowness and decorum which became persons of their dignity and profession. The knight failed not to greet the Lord Abbot with all the formal compliments with which men of rank at that period exchanged courtesies. He had the good fortune to find that his mails were numbered among the train of baggage which attended upon the party; and, satisfied in that particular, he turned his horse's head, and accompanied the Abbot to the Tower of Glendearg.

Great, in the meanwhile, had been the turmoil of the good Dame Elspeth and her coadjutors, to prepare for the fitting reception of the Father Lord Abbot and his retinue. The monks had indeed taken care not to trust too much to the state of her pantry; but she was not the less anxious to make such additions as might enable her to claim the thanks of her feudal lord and spiritual father. Meeting Halbert, as, with his blood on fire, he returned from his altercation with her guest, she commanded him instantly to go forth to the hill, and not to return without venison; reminding him that he was apt enough to go thither for his own pleasure, and must now do so for the credit of the house.

The Miller, who was now hastening his journey homewards, promised to send up some salmon by his own servant. Dame Elspeth, who by this time thought she had guests enough, had begun to repent of her invitation to poor Mysie, and was just considering by what means, short of giving offence, she could send off the Maid of the Mill behind her father, and adjourn all her own aerial architecture till some future opportunity, when this unexpected generosity on the part of the sire rendered any present attempt to return his daughter on his hands too highly ungracious to be farther thought on. So the Miller departed alone on his homeward journey.

Dame Elspeth's sense of hospitality proved in this instance its own reward; for Mysie had dwelt too near the Convent to be altogether ignorant of the noble art of cookery, which her father patronized to the extent of consuming on festival days such dainties as his daughter could prepare in emulation of the luxuries of the Abbot's kitchen. Laying aside, therefore, her holiday kirtle, and adopting a dress more suitable to the occasion, the good-humored maiden bared her snowy arms above the elbows; and, as Elspeth acknowledged, in the language of the time and country, took “entire and aefauld part with her” in the labours of the day; showing unparalleled talent, and indefatigable industry, in the preparation of _mortreux_, _blanc-manger_, and heaven knows what delicacies besides, which Dame Glendinning, unassisted by her skill, dared not even have dreamt of presenting. Leaving this able substitute in the kitchen, and regretting that Mary Avenel was so brought up, that she could intrust nothing to her care, unless it might be seeing the great chamber strewed with rushes, and ornamented with such flowers and branches as the season afforded, Dame Elspeth hastily donned her best attire, and with a beating heart presented herself at the door of her little tower, to make her obeisance to the Lord Abbot as he crossed her humble threshold. Edward stood by his mother, and felt the same palpitation, which his philosophy was at a loss to account for. He was yet to learn how long it is ere our reason is enabled to triumph over the force of external circumstances, and how much our feelings are affected by novelty, and blunted by use and habit.

On the present occasion, he witnessed with wonder and awe the approach of some half-score of riders, sober men upon sober palfreys, muffled in their long black garments, and only relieved by their white scapularies, showing more like a funeral procession than aught else, and not quickening their pace beyond that which permitted easy conversation and easy digestion. The sobriety of the scene was indeed somewhat enlivened by the presence of Sir Piercie Shafton, who, to show that his skill in the manege was not inferior to his other accomplishments, kept alternately pressing and checking his gay courser, forcing him to piaffe, to caracole, to passage, and to do all the other feats of the school, to the great annoyance of the Lord Abbot, the wonted sobriety of whose palfrey became at length discomposed by the vivacity of its companion, while the dignitary kept crying out in bodily alarm, “I do pray you--Sir Knight--good now, Sir Piercie--Be quiet, Benedict, there is a good steed--soh, poor fellow” and uttering all the other precatory and soothing exclamations by which a timid horseman usually bespeaks the favour of a frisky companion, or of his own unquiet nag, and concluding the bead-roll with a sincere _Deo gratias_ so soon as he alighted in the court-yard of the Tower of Glendearg.

The inhabitants unanimously knelt down to kiss the hand of the Lord Abbot, a ceremony which even the monks were often condemned to. Good Abbot Boniface was too much fluttered by the incidents of the latter part of his journey, to go through this ceremony with much solemnity, or indeed with much patience. He kept wiping his brow with a snow-white handkerchief with one hand, while another was abandoned to the homage of his vassals; and then signing the cross with his outstretched arm, and exclaiming, “Bless ye--bless ye, my children” he hastened into the house, and murmured not a little at the darkness and steepness of the rugged winding stair, whereby he at length scaled the spence destined for his entertainment, and, overcome with fatigue, threw himself, I do not say into an easy chair, but into the easiest the apartment afforded.

Chapter the Sixteenth.

A courtier extraordinary, who by diet Of meats and drinks, his temperate exercise, Choice music, frequent bath, his horary shifts Of shirts and waistcoats, means to immortalize Mortality itself, and makes the essence Of his whole happiness the trim of court. MAGNETIC LADY.

When the Lord Abbot had suddenly and superciliously vanished from the eyes of his expectant vassals, the Sub-Prior made amends for the negligence of his principal, by the kind and affectionate greeting which he gave to all the members of the family, but especially to Dame Elspeth, her foster-daughter, and her son Edward. “Where,” he even condescended to inquire, “is that naughty Nimrod, Halbert?--He hath not yet, I trust, turned, like his great prototype, his hunting-spear against man!”

“O no, an it please your reverence,” said Dame Glendinning, “Halbert is up at the glen to get some venison, or surely he would not have been absent when such a day of honour dawned upon me and mine.”

“Oh, to get savoury meat, such as our soul loveth,” muttered the Sub-Prior; “it has been at times an acceptable gift.--I bid you good morrow, my good dame, as I must attend upon his lordship the Father Abbot.”

“And O, reverend sir,” said the good widow, detaining him, “if it might be your pleasure to take part with us if there is any thing wrong; and if there is any thing wanted, to say that it is just coming, or to make some excuses your learning best knows how. Every bit of vassail and silver work have we been spoiled of since Pinkie Cleuch, when I lost poor Simon Glendinning, that was the warst of a'.”

“Never mind--never fear,” said the Sub-Prior, gently extricating his garment from the anxious grasp of Dame Elspeth, “the Refectioner has with him the Abbot's plate and drinking cups; and I pray you to believe that whatever is short in your entertainment will be deemed amply made up in your good-will.”

So saying, he escaped from her and went into the spence, where such preparations as haste permitted were making for the noon collation of the Abbot and the English knight. Here he found the Lord Abbot, for whom a cushion, composed of all the plaids in the house, had been unable to render Simon's huge elbow-chair a soft or comfortable place of rest.

“Benedicite!” said Abbot Boniface, “now marry fie upon these hard benches with all my heart--they are as uneasy as the _scabella_ of our novices. Saint Jude be with us, Sir Knight, how have you contrived to pass over the night in this dungeon? An your bed was no softer than your seat, you might as well have slept on the stone couch of Saint Pacomius. After trotting a full ten miles, a man needs a softer seat than has fallen to my hard lot.”

With sympathizing faces, the Sacristan and the Refectioner ran to raise the Lord Abbot, and to adjust his seat to his mind, which was at length accomplished in some sort, although he continued alternately to bewail his fatigue, and to exult in the conscious sense of having discharged an arduous duty. “You errant cavaliers,” said he, addressing the knight, “may now perceive that others have their travail and their toils to undergo as well as your honoured faculty. And this I will say for myself and the soldiers of Saint Mary, among whom I may be termed captain, that it is not our wont to flinch from the heat of the service, or to withdraw from the good fight. No, by Saint Mary!--no sooner did I learn that you were here, and dared not for certain reasons come to the Monastery, where, with as good will, and with more convenience, we might have given you a better reception, than, striking the table with my hammer, I called a brother--Timothy, said I, let them saddle Benedict--let them saddle my black palfrey, and bid the Sub-Prior and some half-score of attendants be in readiness tomorrow after matins--we would ride to Glendearg.--Brother Timothy stared, thinking, I imagine, that his ears had scarce done him justice--but I repeated my commands, and said, Let the Kitchener and Refectioner go before to aid the poor vassals to whom the place belongs in making a suitable collation. So that you will consider, good Sir Piercie, our mutual in commodities, and forgive whatever you may find amiss.”

“By my faith,” said Sir Piercie Shafton, “there is nothing to forgive--If you spiritual warriors have to submit to the grievous incommodities which your lordship narrates, it would ill become me, a sinful and secular man, to complain of a bed as hard as a board, of broth which relished as if made of burnt wool, of flesh, which, in its sable and singed shape, seemed to put me on a level with Richard Coeur-de-Lion,--when he ate up the head of a Moor carbonadoed, and of other viands savouring rather of the rusticity of this northern region.”

“By the good Saints, sir,” said the Abbot, somewhat touched in point of his character for hospitality, of which he was in truth a most faithful and zealous professor, “it grieves me to the heart that you have found our vassals no better provided for your reception--Yet I crave leave to observe, that if Sir Piercie Shafton's affairs had permitted him to honour with his company our poor house of Saint Mary's, he might have had less to complain of in respect of easements.”

“To give your lordship the reasons,” said Sir Piercie Shafton, “why I could not at this present time approach your dwelling, or avail myself of its well-known and undoubted hospitality, craves either some delay, or,” looking around him, “a limited audience.”

The Lord Abbot immediately issued his mandate to the Refectioner: “Hie thee to the kitchen, Brother Hilarius, and there make inquiry of our brother the Kitchener, within what time he opines that our collation may be prepared, since sin and sorrow it were, considering the hardships of this noble and gallant knight, no whit mentioning or--weighing those we ourselves have endured, if we were now either to advance or retard the hour of refection beyond the time when the viands are fit to be set before us.”

Brother Hilarius parted with an eager alertness to execute the will of his Superior, and returned with the assurance, that punctually at one afternoon would the collation be ready.

“Before that time,” said the accurate Refectioner, “the wafers, flamms, and pastry-meat, will scarce have had the just degree of fire which learned pottingers prescribe as fittest for the body; and if it should be past one o'clock, were it but ten minutes, our brother the Kitchener opines, that the haunch of venison would suffer in spite of the skill of the little turn-broche whom he has recommended to your holiness by his praises.”

“How!” said the Abbot, “a haunch of venison!--from whence comes that dainty? I remember not thou didst intimate its presence in thy hamper of vivers.”

“So please your holiness and lordship,” said the Refectioner, “he is a son of the woman of the house who has shot it and sent it in--killed but now; yet, as the animal heat hath not left the body, the Kitchener undertakes it shall eat as tender as a young chicken--and this youth hath a special gift in shooting deer, and never misses the heart or the brain; so that the blood is not driven through the flesh, as happens too often with us. It is a hart of grease--your holiness has seldom seen such a haunch.”

“Silence, Brother Hilarius,” said the Abbot, wiping his mouth; “it is not beseeming our order to talk of food so earnestly, especially as we must oft have our animal powers exhausted by fasting, and be accessible (as being ever mere mortals) to those signs of longing” (he again wiped his mouth) “which arise on the mention of victuals to an hungry man.--Minute down, however, the name of that youth--it is fitting merit should be rewarded, and he shall hereafter be a _frater ad succurrendum_ in the kitchen and buttery.”

“Alas! reverend Father and my good lord,” replied the Refectioner, “I did inquire after the youth, and I learn he is one who prefers the casque to the cowl, and the sword of the flesh to the weapons of the spirit.”

“And if it be so,” said the Abbot, “see that thou retain him as a deputy-keeper and man-at-arms, and not as a lay brother of the Monastery--for old Tallboy, our forester, waxes dim-eyed, and hath twice spoiled a noble buck, by hitting him unwarily on the haunch. Ah! 'tis a foul fault, the abusing by evil-killing, evil-dressing, evil-appetite, or otherwise, the good creatures indulged to us for our use. Wherefore, secure us the service of this youth, Brother Hilarius, in the way that may best suit him.--And now, Sir Piercie Shafton, since the fates have assigned us a space of well-nigh an hour, ere we dare hope to enjoy more than the vapour or savour of our repast, may I pray you, of your courtesy, to tell me the cause of this visit; and, above all, to inform us, why you will not approach our more pleasant and better furnished _hospitium_?”

“Reverend Father, and my very good lord,” said Sir Piercie Shafton, “it is well known to your wisdom, that there are stone walls which have ears, and that secrecy is to be looked to in matters which concern a man's head.” The Abbot signed to his attendants, excepting the Sub-Prior, to leave the room, and then said, “Your valour, Sir Piercie, may freely unburden yourself before our faithful friend and counsellor Father Eustace, the benefits of whose advice we may too soon lose, inasmuch as his merits will speedily recommend him to an higher station, in which we trust he may find the blessing of a friend and adviser as valuable as himself, since I may say of him, as our claustral rhyme goeth,[Footnote: The rest of this doggerel rhyme may be found in Fosbrooke's Learned work on British Monachism.]

'Dixit Abbas ad Prioris, Tu es homo boni moris, Quia semper sanioris Mihi das concilia.'

Indeed,” he added, “the office of Sub-Prior is altogether beneath our dear brother; nor can we elevate him unto that of Prior, which, for certain reasons, is at present kept vacant amongst us. Howbeit, Father Eustace is fully possessed of my confidence, and worthy of yours, and well may it be said of him, _Intravit in secretis nostris_.”

Sir Piercie Shafton bowed to the reverend brethren, and, heaving a sigh, as if he would burst his steel cuirass, he thus commenced his speech:--

“Certes, reverend sirs, I may well heave such a suspiration, who have, as it were, exchanged heaven for purgatory, leaving the lightsome sphere of the royal court of England for a remote nook in this inaccessible desert--quitting the tilt-yard, where I was ever ready among my compeers to splinter a lance, either for the love of honour, or for the honour of love, in order to couch my knightly spear against base and pilfering besognios and marauders--exchanging the lighted halls, wherein I used nimbly to pace the swift coranto, or to move with a loftier grace in the stately galliard, for this rugged and decayed dungeon of rusty-coloured stone--quitting the gay theatre, for the solitary chimney-nook of a Scottish dog-house--bartering the sounds of the soul-ravishing lute, and the love-awaking viol-de-gamba, for the discordant squeak of a northern bagpipe--above all, exchanging the smiles of those beauties, who form a gay galaxy around the throne of England, for the cold courtesy of an untaught damsel, and the bewildered stare of a miller's maiden. More might I say of the exchange of the conversation of gallant knights and gay courtiers of mine own order and capacity, whose conceits are bright and vivid as the lightning, for that of monks and churchmen--but it were discourteous to urge that topic.”

The Abbot listened to this list of complaints with great round eyes, which evinced no exact intelligence of the orator's meaning; and when the knight paused to take breath, he looked with a doubtful and inquiring eye at the Sub-Prior, not well knowing in what tone he should reply to an exordium so extraordinary. The Sub-Prior accordingly stepped in to the relief of his principal.

“We deeply sympathize with you, Sir Knight, in the several mortifications and hardships to which fate has subjected you, particularly in that which has thrown you into the society of those, who, as they were conscious they deserved not such an honour, so neither did they at all desire it. But all this goes little way to expound the cause of this train of disasters, or, in plainer words, the reason which has compelled you into a situation having so few charms for you.”

“Gentle and reverend sir,” replied the knight, “forgive an unhappy person, who, in giving a history of his miseries, dilateth upon them extremely, even as he who, having fallen from a precipice, looketh upward to measure the height from which he hath been precipitated.”

“Yea, but,” said Father Eustace, “methinks it were wiser in him to tell those who come to lift him up, which of his bones have been broken.”

“You, reverend sir,” said the knight, “have, in the encounter of our wits, made a fair attaint; whereas I may be in some sort said to have broken my staff across. [Footnote: _Attaint_ was a term of tilting used to express the champion's having _attained_ his mark, or, in other words, struck his lance straight and fair against the helmet or breast of his adversary. Whereas to break the lance across, intimated a total failure in directing the point of the weapon on the object of his aim.] Pardon me, grave sir, that I speak in the language of the tilt-yard, which is doubtless strange to your reverend years.--Ah! brave resort of the noble, the fair and the gay!--Ah! throne of love, and citadel of honour!--Ah! celestial beauties, by whose bright eyes it is graced! Never more shall Piercie Shafton advance, as the centre of your radiant glances, couch his lance, and spur his horse at the sound of the spirit-stirring trumpets, nobly called the voice of war--never more shall he baffle his adversary's encounter boldly, break his spear dexterously, and ambling around the lovely circle, receive the rewards with which beauty honours chivalry!”

Here he paused, wrung his hands, looked upwards, and seemed lost in contemplation of his own fallen fortunes.

“Mad, very mad,” whispered the Abbot to the Sub-Prior; “I would we were fairly rid of him; for, of a truth, I expect he will proceed from raving to mischief--Were it not better to call up the rest of the brethren?”

But the Sub-Prior knew better than his Superior how to distinguish the jargon of affectation from the ravings of insanity, and although the extremity of the knight's passion seemed altogether fantastic, yet he was not ignorant to what extravagancies the fashion of the day can conduct its votaries.

Allowing, therefore, two minutes' space to permit the knight's enthusiastic feelings to exhaust themselves, he again gravely reminded him that the Lord Abbot had taken a journey, unwonted to his age and habits, solely to learn in what he could serve Sir Piercie Shafton--that it was altogether impossible he could do so without his receiving distinct information of the situation in which he had now sought refuge in Scotland.--“The day wore on,” he observed, looking at the window; “and if the Abbot should be obliged to return to the Monastery without obtaining the necessary intelligence, the regret might be mutual, but the inconvenience was like to be all on Sir Piercie's own side.”

The hint was not thrown away.

“O, goddess of courtesy!” said the knight, “can I so far have forgotten thy behests as to make this good prelate's ease and time a sacrifice to my vain complaints! Know, then, most worthy, and not less worshipful, that I, your poor visitor and guest, am by birth nearly bound to the Piercie of Northumberland, whose fame is so widely blown through all parts of the world where English worth hath been known. Now, this present Earl of Northumberland, of whom I propose to give you the brief history----”

“It is altogether unnecessary,” said the Abbot; “we know him to be a good and true nobleman, and a sworn upholder of our Catholic faith, in the spite of the heretical woman who now sits upon the throne of England. And it is specially as his kinsman, and as knowing that ye partake with him in such devout and faithful belief and adherence to our holy Mother Church, that we say to you, Sir Piercie Shafton, that ye be heartily welcome to us, and that, and we wist how, we would labour to do you good service in your extremity.”

“For such kind offer I rest your most humble debtor,” said Sir Piercie, “nor need I at this moment say more than that my Right Honourable Cousin of Northumberland, having devised with me and some others, the choice and picked spirits of the age, how and by what means the worship of God, according to the Catholic Church, might be again introduced into this distracted kingdom of England, (even as one deviseth, by the assistance of his friend, to catch and bridle a runaway steed,) it pleased him so deeply to intrust me in those communications, that my personal safety becomes, as it were, entwined or complicated therewith. Natheless, as we have had sudden reason to believe, this Princess Elizabeth, who maintaineth around her a sort of counsellors skilful in tracking whatever schemes may be pursued for bringing her title into challenge, or for erecting again the discipline of the Catholic Church, has obtained certain knowledge of the trains which we had laid before we could give fire unto them. Wherefore, my Right Honourable Cousin of Northumberland, thinking it best belike that one man should take both blame and shame for the whole, did lay the burden of all this trafficking upon my back; which load I am the rather content to bear, in that he hath always shown himself my kind and honourable kinsman, as well as that my estate, I wot not how, hath of late been somewhat insufficient to maintain the expense of those braveries, wherewith it is incumbent on us, who are chosen and selected spirits, to distinguish ourselves from the vulgar.”

“So that possibly,” said the Sub-Prior, “your private affairs rendered a foreign journey less incommodious to you than it might have been to the noble earl, your right worthy cousin?”

“You are right, reverend sir,” answered the courtier; “_rem acu_--you have touched the point with a needle--My cost and expenses had been indeed somewhat lavish at the late triumphs and tourneys, and the flat-capp'd citizens had shown themselves unwilling to furnish my pocket for new gallantries for the honour of the nation, as well as for mine own peculiar glory--and, to speak truth, it was in some part the hope of seeing these matters amended that led me to desire a new world in England.”

“So that the miscarriage of your public enterprise, with the derangement of your own private affairs,” said the Sub-Prior, “have induced you to seek Scotland as a place of refuge?”

“_Rem acu_, once again,” said Sir Piercie; “and not without good cause, since my neck, if I remained, might have been brought within the circumstances of a halter--and so speedy was my journey northward, that I had but time to exchange my peach-coloured doublet of Genoa velvet, thickly laid over with goldsmith's work, for this cuirass, which was made by Bonamico of Milan, and travelled northward with all speed, judging that I might do well to visit my Right Honourable Cousin of Northumberland, at one of his numerous castles. But as I posted towards Alnwick, even with the speed of a star, which, darting from its native sphere, shoots wildly downwards, I was met at Northallerton by one Henry Vaughan, a servant of my right honourable kinsman, who showed me, that as then I might not with safety come to his presence, seeing that, in obedience to orders from his court, he was obliged to issue out letters for my incarceration.”

“This,” said the Abbot, “seems but hard measure on the part of your honourable kinsman.”

“It might be so judged, my lord,” replied Sir Piercie; “nevertheless, I will stand to the death for the honour of my Right Honourable Cousin of Northumberland. Also, Henry Vaughan gave me, from my said cousin, a good horse, and a purse of gold, with two Border-prickers, as they are called, for my guides, who conducted me, by such roads and by-paths as have never been seen since the days of Sir Lancelot and Sir Tristrem, into this kingdom of Scotland, and to the house of a certain baron, or one who holds the style of such, called Julian Avenel, with whom I found such reception as the place and party could afford.”

“And that,” said the Abbot, “must have been right wretched; for to judge from the appetite which Julian showeth when abroad, he hath not, I judge, over-abundant provision at home.”

“You are right, sir--your reverence is in the right,” continued Sir Piercie; “we had but lenten fare, and, what was worse, a score to clear at the departure; for though this Julian Avenel called us to no reckoning, yet he did so extravagantly admire the fashion of my poniard--the _poignet_ being of silver exquisitely hatched, and indeed the weapon being altogether a piece of exceeding rare device and beauty--that in faith I could not for very shame's sake but pray his acceptance of it; words which he gave me not the trouble of repeating twice, before he had stuck it into his greasy buff-belt, where, credit me, reverend sir, it showed more like a butcher's knife than a gentleman's dagger.”

“So goodly a gift might at least have purchased you a few days' hospitality,” said Father Eustace.

“Reverend sir,” said Sir Piercie, “had I abidden with him, I should have been complimented out of every remnant of my wardrobe--actually flayed, by the hospitable gods I swear it! Sir, he secured my spare doublet, and had a pluck at my galligaskins--I was enforced to beat a retreat before I was altogether unrigged. That Border knave, his serving man, had a pluck at me too, and usurped a scarlet cassock and steel cuirass belonging to the page of my body, whom I was fain to leave behind me. In good time I received a letter from my Right Honourable Cousin, showing me that he had written to you in my behalf, and sent to your charge two mails filled with wearing apparel--namely, my rich crimson silk doublet, slashed out and lined with cloth of gold, which I wore at the last revels, with baldric and trimmings to correspond--also two pair black silk slops, with hanging garters of carnation silk--also the flesh-coloured silken doublet, with the trimmings of fur, in which I danced the salvage man at the Gray's-Inn mummery--also----”

“Sir Knight,” said the Sub-Prior, “I pray you to spare the farther inventory of your wardrobe. The monks of Saint Mary's are no free-booting barons, and whatever part of your vestments arrived at our house, have been this day faithfully brought hither, with the mails which contained them. I may presume from what has been said, as we have indeed been, given to understand by the Earl of Northumberland, that your desire is to remain for the present as unknown and as unnoticed, as may be consistent with your high worth and distinction?”

“Alas, reverend father!” replied the courtier, “a blade when it is in the scabbard cannot give lustre, a diamond when it is in the casket cannot give light, and worth, when it is compelled by circumstances to obscure itself, cannot draw observation--my retreat can only attract the admiration of those few to whom circumstances permit its displaying itself.”

“I conceive now, my venerable father and lord,” said the Sub-Prior, “that your wisdom will assign such a course of conduct to this noble knight, as may be alike consistent with his safety, and with the weal of the community. For you wot well, that perilous strides have been made in these audacious days, to the destruction of all ecclesiastical foundations, and that our holy community has been repeatedly menaced. Hitherto they have found no flaw in our raiment; but a party, friendly as well to the Queen of England, as to the heretical doctrines of the schismatical church, or even to worse and wilder forms of heresy, prevails now at the court of our sovereign, who dare not yield to her suffering clergy the protection she would gladly extend to them.”

“My lord, and reverend sir,” said the knight, “I will gladly relieve you of my presence, while ye canvass this matter at your freedom; and to speak truly, I am desirous to see in what case the chamberlain of my noble kinsman hath found my wardrobe, and how he hath packed the same, and whether it has suffered from the journey--there are four suits of as pure and elegant device as ever the fancy of a fair lady doated upon, every one having a treble, and appropriate change of ribbons, trimmings, and fringes, which, in case of need, may as it were renew each of them, and multiply the four into twelve.--There is also my sad-coloured riding-suit, and three cut-work shirts with falling bands--I pray you, pardon me--I must needs see how matters stand with them without farther dallying.”

Thus speaking, he left the room; and the Sub-Prior, looking after him significantly, added, “Where the treasure is will the heart be also.”

“Saint Mary preserve our wits!” said the Abbot, stunned with the knight's abundance of words; “were man's brains ever so stuffed with silk and broadcloth, cut-work, and I wot not what besides! And what could move the Earl of Northumberland to assume for his bosom counsellor, in matters of death and danger, such a feather-brained coxcomb as this?”

“Had he been other than what he is, venerable father,” said the Sub-Prior, “he had been less fitted for the part of scape-goat, to which his Right Honourable Cousin had probably destined him from the commencement, in case of their plot failing. I know something of this Piercie Shafton. The legitimacy of his mother's descent from the Piercie family, the point on which he is most jealous, hath been called in question. If hairbrained courage, and an outrageous spirit of gallantry, can make good his pretensions to the high lineage he claims, these qualities have never been denied him. For the rest, he is one of the ruffling gallants of the time, like Howland Yorke, Stukely,

[Footnote: “Yorke,” says Camden, “was a Londoner, a man of loose and dissolute behaviour, and desperately audacious--famous in his time amongst the common bullies and swaggerers, as being the first that, to the great admiration of many at his boldness, brought into England the bold and dangerous way of fencing with the rapier in duelling. Whereas, till that time, the English used to fight with long swords and bucklers, striking with the edge, and thought it no part of man either to push or strike beneath the girdle.

Having a command in the Low Countries, Yorke revolted to the Spaniards, and died miserably, poisoned, as was supposed, by his new allies. Three years afterwards, his bones were dug up and gibbeted by the command of the States of Holland.

Thomas Stukely, another distinguished gallant of the time, was bred a merchant, being the son of a rich clothier in the west. He wedded the daughter and heiress of a wealthy alderman of London, named Curtis, after whose death he squandered the riches he thus acquired in all manner of extravagance. His wife, whose fortune supplied his waste, represented to him that he ought to make more of her. Stukely replied, “I will make as much of thee, believe me, as it is possible for any to do;” and he kept his word in one sense, having stripped her even of her wearing apparel, before he finally ran away from her.

Having fled to Italy, he contrived to impose upon the Pope, with a plan of invading Ireland, for which he levied soldiers, and made some preparations, but ended by engaging himself and his troops in the service of King Sebastian of Portugal. He sailed with that prince on his fatal voyage to Barbary, and fell with him at the battle of Alcazar.

Stukely, as one of the first gallants of the time, has had the honour to be chronicled in song, in Evans' Old Ballads, vol. iii, edition 1810. His fate is also introduced in a tragedy, by George Peel, as has been supposed, called the Battle of Alcazar, from which play Dryden is alleged to have taken the idea of Don Sebastian; if so, it is surprising he omitted a character so congenial to King Charles the Second's time as the witty, brave, and profligate Thomas Stukely.]

and others, who wear out their fortunes, and endanger their lives, in idle braveries, in order that they may be esteemed the only choice gallants of the time; and afterwards endeavour to repair their estate, by engaging in the desperate plots and conspiracies which wiser heads have devised. To use one of his own conceited similitudes, such courageous fools resemble hawks, which the wiser conspirator keeps hooded and blinded on his wrist until the quarry is on the wing, and who are then flown at them.”

“Saint Mary,” said the Abbot, “he were an evil guest to introduce into our quiet household. Our young monks make bustle enough, and more than is beseeming God's servants, about their outward attire already--this knight were enough to turn their brains, from the _Vestiarius_ down to the very scullion boy.”

“A worse evil might follow,” said the Sub-Prior: “in these bad days, the patrimony of the church is bought and sold, forfeited and distrained, as if it were the unhallowed soil appertaining to a secular baron. Think what penalty awaits us, were we convicted of harbouring a rebel to her whom they call the Queen of England! There would neither be wanting Scottish parasites to beg the lands of the foundation, nor an army from England to burn and harry the Halidome. The men of Scotland were once Scotsmen, firm and united in the love of their country, and throwing every other consideration aside when the frontier was menaced--now they are--what shall I call them--the one part French, the other part English, considering their dear native country merely as a prize-fighting stage, upon which foreigners are welcome to decide their quarrels.”

“Benedictine!” replied the Abbot, “they are indeed slippery and evil times.”

“And therefore,” said Father Eustace, “we must walk warily--we must not, for example, bring this man--this Sir Piercie Shafton, to our house of Saint Mary's.”

“But how then shall we dispose of him?” replied the Abbot; “bethink thee that he is a sufferer for holy Church's sake--that his patron, the Earl of Northumberland, hath been our friend, and that, lying so near us, he may work us weal or wo according as we deal with his kinsman.”

“And, accordingly,” said the Sub-Prior, “for these reasons, as well as for discharge of the great duty of Christian charity, I would protect and relieve this man. Let him not go back to Julian Avenel--that unconscientious baron would not stick to plunder the exiled stranger--Let him remain here--the spot is secluded, and if the accommodation be beneath his quality, discovery will become the less likely. We will make such means for his convenience as we can devise.”

“Will he be persuaded, thinkest thou?” said the Abbot; “I will leave my own travelling bed for his repose, and send up a suitable easy-chair.”

“With such easements,” said the Sub-Prior, “he must not complain; and then, if threatened by any sudden danger, he can soon come down to the sanctuary, where we will harbour him in secret until means can be devised of dismissing him in safety.”

“Were we not better,” said the Abbot, “send him on to the court, and get rid of him at once?”

“Ay, but at the expense of our friends--this butterfly may fold his wings, and lie under cover in the cold air of Glendearg; but were he at Holyrood, he would, did his life depend on it, expand his spangled drapery in the eyes of the queen and court--Rather than fail of distinction, he would sue for love to our gracious sovereign--the eyes of all men would be upon him in the course of three short days, and the international peace of the two ends of the island endangered for a creature, who, like a silly moth, cannot abstain from fluttering round a light.”

“Thou hast prevailed with me, Father Eustace,” said the Abbot, “and it will go hard but I improve on thy plan--I will send up in secret, not only household stuff, but wine and wassell-bread. There is a young swankie here who shoots venison well. I will give him directions to see that the knight lacks none.”

“Whatever accommodation he can have, which infers not a risk of discovery,” said the Sub-Prior, “it is our duty to afford him.”

“Nay,” said the Abbot, “we will do more, and will instantly despatch a servant express to the keeper of our revestiary to send us such things as he may want, even this night. See it done, good father.”

“I will,” answered Father Eustace; “but I hear the gull clamorous for some one to truss his points.[Footnote: The points were the strings of cord or ribbon, (so called, because _pointed_ with metal like the laces of women's stays,) which attached the doublet to the hose. They were very numerous, and required assistance to tie them properly, which was called _trussing_.] He will be fortunate if he lights on any one here who can do him the office of groom of the chamber.”

“I would he would appear,” said the Abbot, “for here comes the Refectioner with the collation--By my faith, the ride hath given me a sharp appetite!”

* * * * *

Chapter the Seventeenth.

I'll seek for other aid--Spirits, they say, Flit round invisible, as thick as motes Dance in the sunbeam. If that spell Or necromancer's sigil can compel them, They shall hold council with me. JAMES DUFF.

The reader's attention must be recalled to Halbert Glendinning, who had left the Tower of Glendearg immediately after his quarrel with its new guest, Sir Piercie Shafton. As he walked with a rapid pace up the glen, Old Martin followed him, beseeching him to be less hasty.

“Halbert,” said the old man, “you will never live to have white hair, if you take fire thus at every spark of provocation.”

“And why should I wish it, old man,” said Halbert, “if I am to be the butt that every fool may aim a shaft of scorn against?--What avails it, old man, that you yourself move, sleep, and wake, eat thy niggard meal, and repose on thy hard pallet?--Why art thou so well pleased that the morning should call thee up to daily toil, and the evening again lay thee down a wearied-out wretch? Were it not better sleep and wake no more, than to undergo this dull exchange of labour for insensibility and of insensibility for labour?”

“God help me,” answered Martin, “there may be truth in what thou sayest--but walk slower, for my old limbs cannot keep pace with your young legs--walk slower, and I will tell you why age, though unlovely, is yet endurable.”

“Speak on then,” said Halbert, slackening his pace, “but remember we must seek venison to refresh the fatigues of these holy men, who will this morning have achieved a journey of ten miles; and if we reach not the Brocksburn head we are scarce like to see an antler.”

“Then know, my good Halbert,” said Martin, “whom I love as my own son, that I am satisfied to live till death calls me, because my Maker wills it. Ay, and although I spend what men call a hard life, pinched with cold in winter, and burnt with heat in summer, though I feed hard and sleep hard, and am held mean and despised, yet I bethink me, that were I of no use on the face of this fair creation, God would withdraw me from it.”

“Thou poor old man,” said Halbert, “and can such a vain conceit as this of thy fancied use, reconcile thee to a world where thou playest so poor a part?”

“My part was nearly as poor,” said Martin, “my person nearly as much despised, the day that I saved my mistress and her child from perishing in the wilderness.”

“Right, Martin,” answered Halbert; “there, indeed, thou didst what might be a sufficient apology for a whole life of insignificance.”

“And do you account it for nothing, Halbert, that I should have the power of giving you a lesson of patience, and submission to the destinies of Providence? Methinks there is use for the grey hairs on the old scalp, were it but to instruct the green head by precept and by example.”

Halbert held down his face, and remained silent for a minute or two, and then resumed his discourse: “Martin, seest thou aught changed in me of late?”

“Surely,” said Martin. “I have always known you hasty, wild, and inconsiderate, rude, and prompt to speak at the volley and without reflection; but now, methinks, your bearing, without losing its natural fire, has something in it of force and dignity which it had not before. It seems as if you had fallen asleep a carle, and awakened a gentleman.”

“Thou canst judge, then, of noble bearing?” said Halbert.

“Surely,” answered Martin, “in some sort I can; for I have travelled through court, and camp, and city, with my master, Walter Avenel, although he could do nothing for me in the long run, but give me room for two score of sheep on the hill--and surely even now, while I speak with you, I feel sensible that my language is more refined than it is my wont to use, and that--though I know not the reason--the rude northern dialect, so familiar to my tongue, has given place to a more town-bred speech.”

“And this change in thyself and me, thou canst by no means account for?” said young Glendinning.

“Change!” replied Martin, “by our Lady it is not so much a change which I feel, as a recalling and renewing sentiments and expressions which I had some thirty years since, ere Tibb and I set up our humble household. It is singular, that your society should have this sort of influence over me, Halbert, and that I should never have experienced it ere now.”

“Thinkest thou,” said Halbert, “thou seest in me aught that can raise me from this base, low, despised state, into one where I may rank with those proud men, who now despise my clownish poverty?”

Martin paused an instant, and then answered, “Doubtless you may, Halbert; as broken a ship has come to land. Heard ye never of Hughie Dun, who left this Halidome some thirty-five years gone by? A deliverly fellow was Hughie--could read and write like a priest, and could wield brand and buckler with the best of the riders. I mind him--the like of him was never seen in the Halidome of Saint Mary's, and so was seen of the preferment that God sent him.”

“And what was that?” said Halbert, his eyes sparkling with eagerness.

“Nothing less,” answered Martin, “than body-servant to the Archbishop of Saint Andrews!”

Halbert's countenance fell.--“A servant--and to a priest? Was this all that knowledge and activity could raise him to?”

Martin, in his turn, looked with wistful surprise in the face of his young friend. “And to what could fortune lead him farther?” answered he. “The son of a kirk-feuar is not the stuff that lords and knights are made of. Courage and school craft cannot change churl's blood into gentle blood, I trow. I have heard, forby, that Hughie Dun left a good five hundred punds of Scots money to his only daughter, and that she married the Bailie of Pittenweem.”

At this moment, and while Halbert was embarrassed with devising a suitable answer, a deer bounded across their path. In an instant the crossbow was at the youth's shoulder, the bolt whistled, and the deer, after giving one bound upright, dropt dead on the green sward.

“There lies the venison our dame wanted,” said Martin; “who would have thought of an out-lying stag being so low down the glen at this season?--And it is a hart of grease too, in full season, and three inches of fat on the brisket. Now this is all your luck, Halbert, that follows you, go where you like. Were you to put in for it, I would warrant you were made one of the Abbot's yeoman-prickers, and ride about in a purple doublet as bold as the best.”

“Tush, man,” answered Halbert, “I will serve the Queen or no one. Take thou care to have down the venison to the Tower, since they expect it. I will on to the moss. I have two or three bird-bolts at my girdle, and it may be I shall find wild-fowl.”

He hastened his pace, and was soon out of sight. Martin paused for a moment, and looked after him. “There goes the making of a right gallant stripling, an ambition have not the spoiling of him--Serve the Queen! said he. By my faith, and she hath worse servants, from all that I e'er heard of him. And wherefore should he not keep a high head? They that ettle to the top of the ladder will at least get up some rounds. They that mint [Footnote: _Mint_--aim at.] at a gown of gold, will always get a sleeve of it. But come, sir, (addressing the stag,) you shall go to Glendearg on my two legs somewhat more slowly than you were frisking it even now on your own four nimble shanks. Nay, by my faith, if you be so heavy, I will content me with the best of you, and that's the haunch and the nombles, and e'en heave up the rest on the old oak-tree yonder, and come back for it with one of the yauds.” [Footnote: _Yauds_--horses; more particularly horses of labour.]

While Martin returned to Glendearg with the venison, Halbert prosecuted his walk, breathing more easily since he was free of his companion. “The domestic of a proud and lazy priest--body-squire to the Archbishop of Saint Andrews,” he repeated to himself; “and this, with the privilege of allying his blood with the Bailie of Pittenween, is thought a preferment worth a brave man's struggling for;--nay more, a preferment which, if allowed, should crown the hopes, past, present, and to come, of the son of a Kirk-vassal! By Heaven, but that I find in me a reluctance to practise their acts of nocturnal rapine, I would rather take the jack and lance, and join with the Border-riders.--Something I will do. Here, degraded and dishonoured, I will not live the scorn of each whiffling stranger from the South, because, forsooth, he wears tinkling spurs on a tawney boot. This thing--this phantom, be it what it will, I will see it once more. Since I spoke with her, and touched her hand, thoughts and feelings have dawned on me, of which my former life had not even dreamed; but shall I, who feel my father's glen too narrow for my expanding spirit, brook to be bearded in it by this vain gewgaw of a courtier, and in the sight too of Mary Avenel? I will not stoop to it, by Heaven!”

As he spoke thus, he arrived in the sequestered glen of Corri-nan-shian, as it verged upon the hour of noon. A few moments he remained looking upon the fountain, and doubting in his own mind with what countenance the White Lady might receive him. She had not indeed expressly forbidden his again evoking her; but yet there was something like such a prohibition implied in the farewell, which recommended him to wait for another guide.

Halbert Glendinning did not long, however, allow himself to pause. Hardihood was the natural characteristic of his mind; and under the expansion and modification which his feelings had lately undergone, it had been augmented rather than diminished. He drew his sword, undid the buskin from his foot, bowed three times with deliberation towards the fountain, and as often towards the tree, and repeated the same rhyme as formerly,--

“Thrice to the holy brake-- Thrice to the well:-- I bid thee awake, White Maid of Avenel!

Noon gleams on the lake-- Noon glows on the fell-- Wake thee, O wake, White Maid of Avenel!”

His eye was on the holly bush as he spoke the last line; and it was not without an involuntary shuddering that he saw the air betwixt his eye and that object become more dim, and condense, as it were, into the faint appearance of a form, through which, however, so thin and transparent was the first appearance of the phantom, he could discern the outline of the bush, as through a veil of fine crape. But, gradually, it darkened into a more substantial appearance, and the White Lady stood before him with displeasure on her brow. She spoke, and her speech was still song, or rather measured chant; but, as if now more familiar, it flowed occasionally in modulated blank-verse, and at other times in the lyrical measure which she had used at their former meeting.

“This is the day when the fairy kind Sits weeping alone for their hopeless lot, And the wood-maiden sighs to the sighing wind, And the mer-maiden weeps in her crystal grot: For this is the day that a deed was wrought, In which we have neither part nor share. For the children of clay was salvation bought, But not for the forms of sea or air! And ever the mortal is most forlorn. Who meeteth our race on the Friday morn.”

“Spirit,” said Halbert Glendinning, boldly, “it is bootless to threaten. one who holds his life at no rate. Thine anger can but slay; nor do I think thy power extendeth, or thy will stretcheth, so far. The terrors which your race produce upon others, are vain against me. My heart is hardened against fear, as by a sense of despair. If I am, as thy words infer, of a race more peculiarly the care of Heaven than thine, it is mine to call, it must be thine to answer. I am the nobler being.”

As he spoke, the figure looked upon him with a fierce and ireful countenance, which, without losing the similitude of that which it usually exhibited, had a wilder and more exaggerated cast of features. The eyes seemed to contract and become more fiery, and slight convulsions passed over the face, as if it was about to be transformed into something hideous. The whole appearance resembled those faces which the imagination summons up when it is disturbed by laudanum, but which do not remain under the visionary's command, and, beautiful in their first appearance, become wild and grotesque ere we can arrest them.

But when Halbert had concluded his bold speech, the White Lady stood before him with the same pale, fixed, and melancholy aspect, which she usually bore. He had expected the agitation which she exhibited would conclude in some frightful metamorphosis. Folding her arms on her bosom, the phantom replied,--

“Daring youth! for thee it is well, Here calling me in haunted dell, That thy heart has not quail'd, Nor thy courage fail'd, And that thou couldst brook The angry look Of Her of Avenel.

Did one limb shiver, Or an eyelid quiver, Thou wert lost for ever. Though I am form'd from the ether blue, And my blood is of the unfallen dew. And thou art framed of mud and dust, 'Tis thine to speak, reply I must.”

“I demand of thee, then,” said the youth, “by what charm it is that I am thus altered in mind and in wishes--that I think no longer of deer or dog, of bow or bolt--that my soul spurns the bounds of this obscure glen--that my blood boils at an insult from one by whose stirrup I would some days since have run for a whole summer's morn, contented and honoured by the notice of a single word? Why do I now seek to mate me with princes, and knights, and nobles?--Am I the same, who but yesterday, as it were, slumbered in contented obscurity, but who am to-day awakened to glory and ambition?--Speak--tell me, if thou canst, the meaning of this change?--Am I spell-bound?--or have I till now been under the influence of a spell, that I feel as another being, yet am conscious of remaining the same? Speak and tell me, is it to thy influence that the change is owing?”

The White Lady replied,--

“A mightier wizard far than I Wields o'er the universe his power; Him owns the eagle in the sky, The turtle in the bower. Chanceful in shape, yet mightiest still, He wields the heart of man at will, From ill to good, from good, to ill, In cot and castle-tower.”

“Speak not thus darkly,” said the youth, colouring so deeply, that face, neck, and hands were in a sanguine glow; “make me sensible of thy purpose.”

The spirit answered,--

“Ask thy heart,--whose secret cell Is fill'd with Marv Avenel! Ask thy pride,--why scornful look In Mary's view it will not brook? Ask it, why thou seek'st to rise Among the mighty and the wise?-- Why thou spurn'st thy lowly lot?-- Why thy pastimes are forgot? Why thou wouldst in bloody strife Mend thy luck or lose thy life? Ask thy heart, and it shall tell, Sighing from its secret cell, 'Tis for Mary Avenel.”

“Tell me, then,” said Halbert, his cheek still deeply crimsoned, “thou who hast said to me that which I dared not say to myself, by what means shall I urge my passion--by what means make it known?”

The White Lady replied,--

“Do not ask me; On doubts like these thou canst not task me. We only see the passing show Of human passions' ebb and flow; And view the pageant's idle glance As mortals eye the northern dance, When thousand streamers, flashing bright, Career it o'er the brow of night. And gazers mark their changeful gleams, But feel no influence from their beams.”

“Yet thine own fate,” replied Halbert, “unless men greatly err, is linked with that of mortals?”

The phantom answered,

“By ties mysterious link'd, our fated race Holds strange connexion with the sons of men. The star that rose upon the House of Avenel, When Norman Ulric first assumed the name, That star, when culminating in its orbit, Shot from its sphere a drop of diamond dew, And this bright font received it--and a Spirit Rose from the fountain, and her date of life Hath co-existence with the House of Avenel, And with the star that rules it.”

“Speak yet more plainly,” answered young Glendinning; “of this I can understand nothing. Say, what hath forged thy wierded [Footnote: _Wierded_--fated.] link of destiny with the House of Avenel? Say, especially, what fate now overhangs that house?”

The White Lady replied,--

“Look on my girdle--on this thread of gold-- 'Tis fine as web of lightest gossamer. And, but there is a spell on't, would not bind, Light as they are, the folds of my thin robe. But when 'twas donn'd, it was a massive chain, Such as might bind the champion of the Jews,

Even when his looks were longest--it hath dwindled, Hath minish'd in its substance and its strength, As sunk the greatness of the House of Avenel. When this frail thread gives way. I to the elements Resign the principles of life they lent me. Ask me no more of this!--the stars forbid it.”

“Then canst thou read the stars,” answered the youth; “and mayest tell me the fate of my passion, if thou canst not aid it?”

The White Lady again replied,--

“Dim burns the once bright star of Avenel, Dim as the beacon when the morn is nigh, And the o'er-wearied warder leaves the light-house; There is an influence sorrowful and fearful. That dogs its downward course. Disastrous passion, Fierce hate and rivalry, are in the aspect That lowers upon its fortunes.”

“And rivalry?” repeated Glendinning; “it is, then, as I feared!--But shall that English silkworm presume to beard me in my father's house, and in the presence of Mary Avenel?--Give me to meet him, spirit--give me to do away the vain distinction of rank on which he refuses me the combat. Place us on equal terms, and gleam the stars with what aspect they will, the sword of my father shall control their influences.”

She answered as promptly as before,--

“Complain not of me, child of clay, If to thy harm I yield the way. We, who soar thy sphere above, Know not aught of hate or love; As will or wisdom rules thy mood, My gifts to evil turn, or good.”

“Give me to redeem my honour,” said Halbert Glendinning--“give me to retort on my proud rival the insults he has thrown on me, and let the rest fare as it will. If I cannot revenge my wrong, I shall sleep quiet, and know nought of my disgrace.”

The phantom failed not to reply,--

“When Piercie Shafton boasteth high, Let this token meet his eye. The sun is westering from the dell, Thy wish is granted--fare thee well!”

As the White Lady spoke or chanted these last words, she undid from her locks a silver bodkin around which they were twisted, and gave it to Halbert Glendinning; then shaking her dishevelled hair till it fell like a veil around her, the outlines of her form gradually became as diffuse as her flowing tresses, her countenance grew pale as the moon in her first quarter, her features became indistinguishable, and she melted into the air.

Habit inures us to wonders; but the youth did not find himself alone by the fountain without experiencing, though in a much less degree, the revulsion of spirits which he had felt upon the phantom's former disappearance. A doubt strongly pressed upon his mind, whether it were safe to avail himself of the gifts of a spirit which did not even pretend to belong to the class of angels, and might, for aught he knew, have a much worse lineage than that which she was pleased to avow. “I will speak of it,” he said, “to Edward, who is clerkly learned, and will tell me what I should do. And yet, no--Edward is scrupulous and wary.--I will prove the effect of her gift on Sir Piercie Shafton, if he again braves me, and by the issue, I will be myself a sufficient judge whether there is danger in resorting to her counsel. Home, then, home--and we shall soon learn whether that home shall longer hold me; for not again will I brook insult, with my father's sword by my side, and Mary for the spectator of my disgrace.”

Chapter the Eighteenth.

I give thee eighteenpence a-day, And my bow shall thou bear, And over all the north country, I make thee the chief rydere. And I thirteenpence a-day, quoth the queen, By God and by my faye, Come fetch thy payment when thou wilt, No man shall say thee nay. WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLEY.

The manners of the age did not permit the inhabitants of Glendearg to partake of the collation which was placed in the spence of that ancient tower, before the Lord Abbot and his attendants, and Sir Piercie Shafton. Dame Glendinning was excluded, both by inferiority of rank and by sex, for (though it was a rule often neglected) the Superior of Saint Mary's was debarred from taking his meals in female society. To Mary Avenel the latter, and to Edward Glendinning the former, incapacity attached; but it pleased his lordship to require their presence in the apartment, and to say sundry kind words to them upon the ready and hospitable reception which they had afforded him.

The smoking haunch now stood upon the table; a napkin, white as snow, was, with due reverence, tucked under the chin of the Abbot by the Refectioner; and nought was wanting to commence the repast, save the presence of Sir Piercie Shafton, who at length appeared, glittering like the sun, in a carnation-velvet doublet, slashed and puffed out with cloth of silver, his hat of the newest block, surrounded by a hatband of goldsmith's work, while around his neck he wore a collar of gold, set with rubies and topazes so rich, that it vindicated his anxiety for the safety of his baggage from being founded upon his love of mere finery. This gorgeous collar or chain, resembling those worn by the knights of the highest orders of chivalry, fell down on his breast, and terminated in a medallion.

“We waited for Sir Piercie Shafton,” said the Abbot, hastily assuming his place in the great chair which the Kitchener advanced to the table with ready hand.

“I pray your pardon, reverend father, and my good lord,” replied that pink of courtesy; “I did but wait to cast my riding slough, and to transmew myself into some civil form meeter for this worshipful company.”

“I cannot but praise your gallantry, Sir Knight,” said the Abbot, “and your prudence, also, for choosing the fitting time to appear thus adorned. Certes, had that goodly chain been visible in some part of your late progress, there was risk that the lawful owner might have parted company therewith.”

“This chain, said your reverence?” answered Sir Piercie; “surely it is but a toy, a trifle, a slight thing which shows but poorly with this doublet--marry, when I wear that of the murrey-coloured double-piled Genoa velvet, puffed out with ciprus, the gems, being relieved and set off by the darker and more grave ground of the stuff, show like stars giving a lustre through dark clouds.”

“I nothing doubt it,” said the Abbot, “but I pray you to sit down at the board.”

But Sir Piercie had now got into his element, and was not easily interrupted--“I own,” he continued, “that slight as the toy is, it might perchance have had some captivation for Julian--Santa Maria!” said he, interrupting himself; “what was I about to say, and my fair and beauteous Protection, or shall I rather term her my Discretion, here in presence!--Indiscreet hath it been in your Affability, O most lovely Discretion, to suffer a stray word to have broke out of the penfold of his mouth, that might overleap the fence of civility, and trespass on the manor of decorum.”

“Marry!” said the Abbot, somewhat impatiently, “the greatest discretion that I can see in the matter is, to eat our victuals being hot--Father Eustace, say the Benedicite, and cut up the haunch.”

The Sub-Prior readily obeyed the first part of the Abbot's injunction, but paused upon the second--“It is Friday, most reverend,” he said in Latin, desirous that the hint should escape, if possible, the ears of the stranger.

“We are travellers,” said the Abbot, in reply, “and _viatoribus licitum est_--You know the canon--a traveller must eat what food his hard fate sets before him. I grant you all a dispensation to eat flesh this day, conditionally that you, brethren