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The Abbot

by Walter Scott · English · Gutenberg #6407 · 1,061,581 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Abbot

Author: Walter Scott


        
Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6407]
                Most recently updated: April 19, 2018

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABBOT ***




Produced by Alan Millar, David Moynihan, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team








           THE ABBOT.

BEING THE SEQUEL TO THE MONASTERY.

     By Sir Walter Scott



[Illustration: ROLAND GRAEME AND CATHERINE SETON BEFORE QUEEN MARY.]




INTRODUCTION--(1831.)

From what is said in the Introduction to the Monastery, it must
necessarily be inferred, that the Author considered that romance as
something very like a failure. It is true, the booksellers did not
complain of the sale, because, unless on very felicitous occasions,
or on those which are equally the reverse, literary popularity is not
gained or lost by a single publication. Leisure must be allowed for the
tide both to flow and ebb. But I was conscious that, in my situation,
not to advance was in some Degree to recede, and being naturally
unwilling to think that the principle of decay lay in myself, I was
at least desirous to know of a certainty, whether the degree of
discountenance which I had incurred, was now owing to an ill-managed
story, or an ill-chosen subject.

I was never, I confess, one of those who are willing to suppose the
brains of an author to be a kind of milk, which will not stand above
a single creaming, and who are eternally harping to young authors to
husband their efforts, and to be chary of their reputation, lest it grow
hackneyed in the eyes of men. Perhaps I was, and have always been, the
more indifferent to the degree of estimation in which I might be held
as an author, because I did not put so high a value as many others upon
what is termed literary reputation in the abstract, or at least upon the
species of popularity which had fallen to my share; for though it
were worse than affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my
success in the department in which chance had in some measure enlisted
me, I was, nevertheless, far from thinking that the novelist or
romance-writer stands high in the ranks of literature. But I spare the
reader farther egotism on this subject, as I have expressed my opinion
very fully in the Introductory Epistle to the Fortunes of Nigel, first
edition; and, although it be composed in an imaginary character, it is
as sincere and candid as if it had been written “without my gown and
band.”

In a word, when I considered myself as having been unsuccessful in the
Monastery, I was tempted to try whether I could not restore, even at
the risk of totally losing, my so-called reputation, by a new hazard--I
looked round my library, and could not but observe, that, from the time
of Chaucer to that of Byron, the most popular authors had been the
most prolific. Even the aristarch Johnson allowed that the quality
of readiness and profusion had a merit in itself, independent of the
intrinsic value of the composition. Talking of Churchill, I believe,
who had little merit in his prejudiced eyes, he allowed him that of
fertility, with some such qualification as this, “A Crab-apple can bear
but crabs after all; but there is a great difference in favour of that
which bears a large quantity of fruit, however indifferent, and that
which produces only a few.”

Looking more attentively at the patriarchs of literature, whose earner
was as long as it was brilliant, I thought I perceived that in the
busy and prolonged course of exertion, there were no doubt occasional
failures, but that still those who were favourites of their age
triumphed over these miscarriages. By the new efforts which they
made, their errors were obliterated, they became identified with the
literature of their country, and after having long received law from the
critics, came in some degree to impose it. And when such a writer was at
length called from the scene, his death first made the public sensible
what a large share he had occupied in their attention. I recollected a
passage in Grimm's Correspondence, that while the unexhausted Voltaire
sent forth tract after tract to the very close of a long life, the first
impression made by each as it appeared, was, that it was inferior to
its predecessors; an opinion adopted from the general idea that the
Patriarch of Ferney must at last find the point from which he was to
decline. But the opinion of the public finally ranked in succession
the last of Voltaire's Essays on the same footing with those which had
formerly charmed the French nation. The inference from this and similar
facts seemed to me to be, that new works were often judged of by the
public, not so much from their own intrinsic merit, as from extrinsic
ideas which readers had previously formed with regard to them, and over
which a writer might hope to triumph by patience and by exertion. There
is risk in the attempt;

   “If he fall in, good night, or sink or swim.”

But this is a chance incident to every literary attempt, and by which
men of a sanguine temper are little moved.

I may illustrate what I mean, by the feelings of most men in travelling.
If we have found any stage particularly tedious, or in an especial
degree interesting, particularly short, or much longer than we expected,
our imaginations are so apt to exaggerate the original impression, that,
on repeating the journey, we usually find that we have considerably
over-rated the predominating quality, and the road appears to be duller
or more pleasant, shorter or more tedious, than what we expected, and,
consequently, than what is actually the case. It requires a third or
fourth journey to enable us to form an accurate judgment of its beauty,
its length, or its other attributes.

In the same manner, the public, judging of a new work, which it receives
perhaps with little expectation, if surprised into applause, becomes
very often ecstatic, gives a great deal more approbation than is due,
and elevates the child of its immediate favour to a rank which, as it
affects the author, it is equally difficult to keep, and painful to
lose. If, on this occasion, the author trembles at the height to which
he is raised, and becomes afraid of the shadow of his own renown, he may
indeed retire from the lottery with the prize which he has drawn, but,
in future ages, his honour will be only in proportion to his labours.
If, on the contrary, he rushes again into the lists, he is sure to be
judged with severity proportioned to the former favour of the public. If
he be daunted by a bad reception on this second occasion, he may again
become a stranger to the arena. If, on the contrary, he can keep his
ground, and stand the shuttlecock's fate, of being struck up and down,
he will probably, at length, hold with some certainty the level in
public opinion which he may be found to deserve; and he may perhaps
boast of arresting the general attention, in the same manner as the
Bachelor Samson Carrasco, of fixing the weathercock La Giralda of
Seville for weeks, months, or years, that is, for as long as the wind
shall uniformly blow from one quarter. To this degree of popularity the
author had the hardihood to aspire, while, in order to attain it, he
assumed the daring resolution to keep himself in the view of the public
by frequent appearances before them.

It must be added, that the author's incognito gave him greater courage
to renew his attempts to please the public, and an advantage similar to
that which Jack the Giant-killer received from his coat of darkness.
In sending the Abbot forth so soon after the Monastery, he had used the
well-known practice recommended by Bassanio:--

  “In my school days, when I had lost one shaft,
  I shot another of the self-same flight,
  The self-same way, with more advised watch,
  To find the other forth.”

And, to continue the simile, his shafts, like those of the lesser Ajax,
were discharged more readily that the archer was as inaccessible
to criticism, personally speaking, as the Grecian archer under his
brother's sevenfold shield.

Should the reader desire to know upon what principles the Abbot was
expected to amend the fortune of the Monastery, I have first to request
his attention to the Introductory Epistle addressed to the imaginary
Captain Clutterbuck; a mode by which, like his predecessors in this walk
of fiction, the real author makes one of his _dramatis personae_ the
means of communicating his own sentiments to the public, somewhat more
artificially than by a direct address to the readers. A pleasing French
writer of fairy tales, Monsieur Pajon, author of the History of Prince
Soly, has set a diverting example of the same machinery, where he
introduces the presiding Genius of the land of Romance conversing with
one of the personages of the tale.

In this Introductory Epistle, the author communicates, in confidence, to
Captain Clutterbuck, his sense that the White Lady had not met the taste
of the times, and his reason for withdrawing her from the scene. The
author did not deem it equally necessary to be candid respecting another
alteration. The Monastery was designed, at first, to have contained some
supernatural agency, arising out of the fact, that Melrose had been the
place of deposit of the great Robert Bruce's heart. The writer shrunk,
however, from filling up, in this particular, the sketch as it was
originally traced; nor did he venture to resume, in continuation, the
subject which he had left unattempted in the original work. Thus, the
incident of the discovery of the heart, which occupies the greater
part of the Introduction to the Monastery, is a mystery unnecessarily
introduced, and which remains at last very imperfectly explained. In
this particular, I was happy to shroud myself by the example of the
author of “Caleb Williams,” who never condescends to inform us of the
actual contents of that Iron Chest which makes such a figure in his
interesting work, and gives the name to Mr. Colman's drama.

The public had some claim to inquire into this matter, but it seemed
indifferent policy in the author to give the explanation. For, whatever
praise may be due to the ingenuity which brings to a general combination
all the loose threads of a narrative, like the knitter at the finishing
of her stocking, I am greatly deceived if in many cases a superior
advantage is not attained, by the air of reality which the deficiency
of explanation attaches to a work written on a different system. In life
itself, many things befall every mortal, of which the individual never
knows the real cause or origin; and were we to point out the most marked
distinction between a real and a fictitious narrative, we would say,
that the former in reference to the remote causes of the events it
relates, is obscure, doubtful, and mysterious; whereas, in the latter
case, it is a part of the author's duty to afford satisfactory details
upon the causes of the separate events he has recorded, and, in a word,
to account for every thing. The reader, like Mungo in the Padlock, will
not be satisfied with hearing what he is not made fully to comprehend.

I omitted, therefore, in the Introduction to the Abbot, any attempt to
explain the previous story, or to apologize for unintelligibility.

Neither would it have been prudent to have endeavoured to proclaim,
in the Introduction to the Abbot, the real spring, by which I hoped
it might attract a greater degree of interest than its immediate
predecessor. A taking title, or the announcement of a popular subject,
is a recipe for success much in favour with booksellers, but which
authors will not always find efficacious. The cause is worth a moment's
examination.

There occur in every country some peculiar historical characters, which
are, like a spell or charm, sovereign to excite curiosity and attract
attention, since every one in the slightest degree interested in the
land which they belong to, has heard much of them, and longs to hear
more. A tale turning on the fortunes of Alfred or Elizabeth in England,
or of Wallace or Bruce in Scotland, is sure by the very announcement
to excite public curiosity to a considerable degree, and ensure the
publisher's being relieved of the greater part of an impression,
even before the contents of the work are known. This is of the last
importance to the bookseller, who is at once, to use a technical phrase,
“brought home,” all his outlay being repaid. But it is a different case
with the author, since it cannot be denied that we are apt to feel least
satisfied with the works of which we have been induced, by titles and
laudatory advertisements, to entertain exaggerated expectations.
The intention of the work has been anticipated, and misconceived or
misrepresented, and although the difficulty of executing the work again
reminds us of Hotspur's task of “o'er-walking a current roaring loud,”
 yet the adventurer must look for more ridicule if he fails, than
applause if he executes, his undertaking.

Notwithstanding a risk, which should make authors pause ere they adopt
a theme which, exciting general interest and curiosity, is often
the preparative for disappointment, yet it would be an injudicious
regulation which should deter the poet or painter from attempting to
introduce historical portraits, merely from the difficulty of executing
the task in a satisfactory manner. Something must be trusted to the
generous impulse, which often thrusts an artist upon feats of which he
knows the difficulty, while he trusts courage and exertion may afford
the means of surmounting it.

It is especially when he is sensible of losing ground with the public,
that an author may be justified in using with address, such selection of
subject or title as is most likely to procure a rehearing. It was with
these feelings of hope and apprehension, that I venture to awaken, in
a work of fiction, the memory of Queen Mary, so interesting by her
wit, her beauty, her misfortunes, and the mystery which still does, and
probably always will, overhang her history. In doing so, I was aware
that failure would be a conclusive disaster, so that my task was
something like that of an enchanter who raises a spirit over whom he
is uncertain of possessing an effectual control; and I naturally paid
attention to such principles of composition, as I conceived were best
suited to the historical novel.

Enough has been already said to explain the purpose of composing the
Abbot. The historical references are, as usual, explained in the notes.
That which relates to Queen Mary's escape from Lochleven Castle, is a
more minute account of that romantic adventure, than is to be found in
the histories of the period.

ABBOTSFORD,

1_st January_, 1831.





INTRODUCTORY EPISTLE.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF “WAVERLEY,” TO CAPTAIN CLUTTERBUCK, LATE OF HIS
MAJESTY'S ---- REGIMENT OF INFANTRY.

DEAR CAPTAIN:

I am sorry to observe, by your last favour, that you disapprove of
the numerous retrenchments and alterations which I have been under the
necessity of making on the Manuscript of your friend, the Benedictine,
and I willingly make you the medium of apology to many, who have
honoured me more than I deserve.

I admit that my retrenchments have been numerous, and leave gaps in the
story, which, in your original manuscript, would have run well-nigh to
a fourth volume, as my printer assures me. I am sensible, besides, that,
in consequence of the liberty of curtailment you have allowed me, some
parts of the story have been huddled up without the necessary details.
But, after all, it is better that the travellers should have to step
over a ditch, than to wade through a morass--that the reader should have
to suppose what may easily be inferred, than be obliged to creep through
pages of dull explanation. I have struck out, for example, the whole
machinery of the White Lady, and the poetry by which it is so ably
supported, in the original manuscript. But you must allow that
the public taste gives little encouragement to those legendary
superstitions, which formed alternately the delight and the terror of
our predecessors. In like manner, much is omitted illustrative of
the impulse of enthusiasm in favour of the ancient religion in Mother
Magdalen and the Abbot. But we do not feel deep sympathy at this period
with what was once the most powerful and animating principle in
Europe, with the exception of that of the Reformation, by which it was
successfully opposed.

You rightly observe, that these retrenchments have rendered the title
no longer applicable to the subject, and that some other would have been
more suitable to the Work, in its present state, than that of THE ABBOT,
who made so much greater figure in the original, and for whom your
friend, the Benedictine, seems to have inspired you with a sympathetic
respect. I must plead guilty to this accusation, observing, at the same
time, in manner of extenuation, that though the objection might have
been easily removed, by giving a new title to the Work, yet, in doing
so, I should have destroyed the necessary cohesion between the present
history, and its predecessor THE MONASTERY, which I was unwilling to do,
as the period, and several of the personages, were the same.

After all, my good friend, it is of little consequence what the work
is called, or on what interest it turns, provided it catches the public
attention; for the quality of the wine (could we but insure it) may,
according to the old proverb, render the bush unnecessary, or of little
consequence.

I congratulate you upon your having found it consistent with prudence
to establish your Tilbury, and approve of the colour, and of your
boy's livery, (subdued green and pink.)--As you talk of completing
your descriptive poem on the “Ruins of Kennaquhair, with notes by an
Antiquary,” I hope you have procured a steady horse.--I remain, with
compliments to all friends, dear Captain, very much

Yours, &c. &c. &c.

THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.




THE ABBOT.




Chapter the First.


  _Domum mansit--lanam fecit._
              Ancient Roman Epitaph.

  She keepit close the hous, and birlit at the quhele.
                                      GAWAIN DOUGLAS.

The time which passes over our heads so imperceptibly, makes the
same gradual change in habits, manners, and character, as in personal
appearance. At the revolution of every five years we find ourselves
another, and yet the same--there is a change of views, and no less of
the light in which we regard them; a change of motives as well as
of actions. Nearly twice that space had glided away over the head of
Halbert Glendinning and his lady, betwixt the period of our former
narrative, in which they played a distinguished part, and the date at
which our present tale commences.

Two circumstances only had imbittered their union, which was otherwise
as happy as mutual affection could render it. The first of these was
indeed the common calamity of Scotland, being the distracted state of
that unhappy country, where every man's sword was directed against his
neighbour's bosom. Glendinning had proved what Murray expected of him,
a steady friend, strong in battle, and wise in counsel, adhering to him,
from motives of gratitude, in situations where by his own unbiassed will
he would either have stood neuter, or have joined the opposite party.
Hence, when danger was near--and it was seldom far distant--Sir Halbert
Glendinning, for he now bore the rank of knighthood, was perpetually
summoned to attend his patron on distant expeditions, or on perilous
enterprises, or to assist him with his counsel in the doubtful intrigues
of a half-barbarous court. He was thus frequently, and for a long space,
absent from his castle and from his lady; and to this ground of regret
we must add, that their union had not been blessed with children, to
occupy the attention of the Lady of Avenel, while she was thus deprived
of her husband's domestic society.

On such occasions she lived almost entirely secluded from the world,
within the walls of her paternal mansion. Visiting amongst neighbors
was a matter entirely out of the question, unless on occasions of solemn
festival, and then it was chiefly confined to near kindred. Of these the
Lady of Avenel had none who survived, and the dames of the neighbouring
barons affected to regard her less as the heiress of the house of Avenel
than as the wife of a peasant, the son of a church-vassal, raised up to
mushroom eminence by the capricious favour of Murray.

The pride of ancestry, which rankled in the bosom of the ancient gentry,
was more openly expressed by their ladies, and was, moreover, imbittered
not a little by the political feuds of the time, for most of the
Southern chiefs were friends to the authority of the Queen, and very
jealous of the power of Murray. The Castle of Avenel was, therefore, on
all these accounts, as melancholy and solitary a residence for its lady
as could well be imagined. Still it had the essential recommendation of
great security. The reader is already aware that the fortress was built
upon an islet on a small lake, and was only accessible by a causeway,
intersected by a double ditch, defended by two draw-bridges, so that
without artillery, it might in those days be considered as impregnable.
It was only necessary, therefore, to secure against surprise, and
the service of six able men within the castle was sufficient for that
purpose. If more serious danger threatened, an ample garrison was
supplied by the male inhabitants of a little hamlet, which, under the
auspices of Halbert Glendinning, had arisen on a small piece of level
ground, betwixt the lake and the hill, nearly adjoining to the spot
where the causeway joined the mainland. The Lord of Avenel had found
it an easy matter to procure inhabitants, as he was not only a kind and
beneficent overlord, but well qualified, both by his experience in arms,
his high character for wisdom and integrity, and his favour with the
powerful Earl of Murray, to protect and defend those who dwelt under his
banner. In leaving his castle for any length of time, he had, therefore,
the consolation to reflect, that this village afforded, on the slightest
notice, a band of thirty stout men, which was more than sufficient for
its defence; while the families of the villagers, as was usual on such
occasions, fled to the recesses of the mountains, drove their cattle
to the same places of shelter, and left the enemy to work their will on
their miserable cottages.

One guest only resided generally, if not constantly, at the Castle of
Avenel. This was Henry Warden, who now felt himself less able for the
stormy task imposed on the reforming clergy; and having by his zeal
given personal offence to many of the leading nobles and chiefs, did not
consider himself as perfectly safe, unless when within the walls of the
strong mansion of some assured friend. He ceased not, however, to serve
his cause as eagerly with his pen, as he had formerly done with his
tongue, and had engaged in a furious and acrimonious contest, concerning
the sacrifice of the mass, as it was termed, with the Abbot Eustatius,
formerly the Sub-Prior of Kennaquhair. Answers, replies, duplies,
triplies, quadruplies, followed thick upon each other, and displayed, as
is not unusual in controversy, fully as much zeal as Christian charity.
The disputation very soon became as celebrated as that of John Knox
and the Abbot of Crosraguel, raged nearly as fiercely, and, for aught I
know, the publications to which it gave rise may be as precious in the
eyes of bibliographers. [Footnote: The tracts which appeared in the
Disputation between the Scottish Reformer and Quentin Kennedy, Abbot
of Crosraguel, are among the scarcest in Scottish Bibliography. See
M'Crie's _Life of Knox_, p. 258.] But the engrossing nature of his
occupation rendered the theologian not the most interesting companion
for a solitary female; and his grave, stern, and absorbed deportment,
which seldom showed any interest, except in that which concerned his
religious profession, made his presence rather add to than diminish the
gloom which hung over the Castle of Avenel. To superintend the tasks of
numerous female domestics, was the principal part of the Lady's daily
employment; her spindle and distaff, her Bible, and a solitary walk upon
the battlements of the castle, or upon the causeway, or occasionally,
but more seldom, upon the banks of the little lake, consumed the rest
of the day. But so great was the insecurity of the period, that when
she ventured to extend her walk beyond the hamlet, the warder on the
watch-tower was directed to keep a sharp look-out in every direction,
and four or five men held themselves in readiness to mount and sally
forth from the castle on the slightest appearance of alarm.

Thus stood affairs at the castle, when, after an absence of several
weeks, the Knight of Avenel, which was now the title most frequently
given to Sir Halbert Glendinning, was daily expected to return home. Day
after day, however, passed away, and he returned not. Letters in
those days were rarely written, and the Knight must have resorted to a
secretary to express his intentions in that manner; besides, intercourse
of all kinds was precarious and unsafe, and no man cared to give any
public intimation of the time and direction of a journey, since, if his
route were publicly known, it was always likely he might in that case
meet with more enemies than friends upon the road. The precise day,
therefore, of Sir Halbert's return, was not fixed, but that which his
lady's fond expectation had calculated upon in her own mind had long
since passed, and hope delayed began to make the heart sick.

It was upon the evening of a sultry summer's day, when the sun was
half-sunk behind the distant western mountains of Liddesdale, that the
Lady took her solitary walk on the battlements of a range of buildings,
which formed the front of the castle, where a flat roof of flag-stones
presented a broad and convenient promenade. The level surface of the
lake, undisturbed except by the occasional dipping of a teal-duck, or
coot, was gilded with the beams of the setting luminary, and reflected,
as if in a golden mirror, the hills amongst which it lay embossed. The
scene, otherwise so lonely, was occasionally enlivened by the voices of
the children in the village, which, softened by distance, reached the
ear of the Lady, in her solitary walk, or by the distant call of the
herdsman, as he guided his cattle from the glen in which they had
pastured all day, to place them in greater security for the night,
in the immediate vicinity of the village. The deep lowing of the cows
seemed to demand the attendance of the milk-maidens, who, singing
shrilly and merrily, strolled forth, each with her pail on her head,
to attend to the duty of the evening. The Lady of Avenel looked and
listened; the sounds which she heard reminded her of former days, when
her most important employment, as well as her greatest delight, was
to assist Dame Glendinning and Tibb Tackett in milking the cows at
Glendearg. The thought was fraught with melancholy.

“Why was I not,” she said, “the peasant girl which in all men's eyes I
seemed to be? Halbert and I had then spent our life peacefully in his
native glen, undisturbed by the phantoms either of fear or of ambition.
His greatest pride had then been to show the fairest herd in the
Halidome; his greatest danger to repel some pilfering snatcher from the
Border; and the utmost distance which would have divided us, would have
been the chase of some outlying deer. But, alas! what avails the blood
which Halbert has shed, and the dangers which he encounters, to support
a name and rank, dear to him because he has it from me, but which we
shall never transmit to our posterity! with me the name of Avenel must
expire.”

She sighed as the reflections arose, and, looking towards the shore of
the lake, her eye was attracted by a group of children of various ages,
assembled to see a little ship, constructed by some village artist,
perform its first voyage on the water. It was launched amid the shouts
of tiny voices and the clapping of little hands, and shot bravely forth
on its voyage with a favouring wind, which promised to carry it to the
other side of the lake. Some of the bigger boys ran round to receive and
secure it on the farther shore, trying their speed against each other
as they sprang like young fawns along the shingly verge of the lake. The
rest, for whom such a journey seemed too arduous, remained watching the
motions of the fairy vessel from the spot where it had been launched.
The sight of their sports pressed on the mind of the childless Lady of
Avenel.

“Why are none of these prattlers mine?” she continued, pursuing the
tenor of her melancholy reflections. “Their parents can scarce find them
the coarsest food--and I, who could nurse them in plenty, I am doomed
never to hear a child call me mother!”

The thought sunk on her heart with a bitterness which resembled envy,
so deeply is the desire of offspring implanted in the female breast. She
pressed her hands together as if she were wringing them in the extremity
of her desolate feeling, as one whom Heaven had written childless. A
large stag-hound of the greyhound species approached at this moment, and
attracted perhaps by the gesture, licked her hands and pressed his large
head against them. He obtained the desired caresses in return, but still
the sad impression remained.

“Wolf,” she said, as if the animal could have understood her complaints,
“thou art a noble and beautiful animal; but, alas! the love and
affection that I long to bestow, is of a quality higher than can fall to
thy share, though I love thee much.”

And, as if she were apologizing to Wolf for withholding from him any
part of her regard, she caressed his proud head and crest, while,
looking in her eyes, he seemed to ask her what she wanted, or what he
could do to show his attachment. At this moment a shriek of distress
was heard on the shore, from the playful group which had been lately so
jovial. The Lady looked, and saw the cause with great agony.

The little ship, the object of the children's delighted attention, had
stuck among some tufts of the plant which bears the water-lily, that
marked a shoal in the lake about an arrow-flight from the shore. A hardy
little boy, who had taken the lead in the race round the margin of the
lake, did not hesitate a moment to strip off his _wylie-coat_, plunge
into the water, and swim towards the object of their common solicitude.
The first movement of the Lady was to call for help; but she observed
that the boy swam strongly and fearlessly, and as she saw that one or
two villagers, who were distant spectators of the incident, seemed to
give themselves no uneasiness on his account, she supposed that he was
accustomed to the exercise, and that there was no danger. But whether,
in swimming, the boy had struck his breast against a sunken rock,
or whether he was suddenly taken with cramp, or whether he had
over-calculated his own strength, it so happened, that when he had
disembarrassed the little plaything from the flags in which it was
entangled, and sent it forward on its course, he had scarce swam a few
yards in his way to the shore, than he raised himself suddenly from the
water, and screamed aloud, clapping his hands at the same time with an
expression of fear and pain.

The Lady of Avenel, instantly taking the alarm, called hastily to the
attendants to get the boat ready. But this was an affair of some time.
The only boat permitted to be used on the lake, was moored within the
second cut which intersected the canal, and it was several minutes ere
it could be unmoored and got under way. Meantime, the Lady of Avenel,
with agonizing anxiety, saw that the efforts that the poor boy made to
keep himself afloat, were now exchanged for a faint struggling, which
would soon have been over, but for aid equally prompt and unhoped-for.
Wolf, who, like some of that large species of greyhound, was a practised
water-dog, had marked the object of her anxiety, and, quitting his
mistress's side, had sought the nearest point from which he could with
safety plunge into the lake. With the wonderful instinct which these
noble animals have so often displayed in the like circumstances, he
swam straight to the spot where his assistance was so much wanted,
and seizing the child's under-dress in his mouth, he not only kept him
afloat, but towed him towards the causeway. The boat having put off with
a couple of men, met the dog half-way, and relieved him of his burden.
They landed on the causeway, close by the gates of the castle, with
their yet lifeless charge, and were there met by the Lady of Avenel,
attended by one or two of her maidens, eagerly waiting to administer
assistance to the sufferer.

He was borne into the castle, deposited upon a bed, and every mode of
recovery resorted to, which the knowledge of the times, and the skill
of Henry Warden, who professed some medical science, could dictate. For
some time it was all in vain, and the Lady watched, with unspeakable
earnestness, the pallid countenance of the beautiful child. He seemed
about ten years old. His dress was of the meanest sort, but his long
curled hair, and the noble cast of his features, partook not of that
poverty of appearance. The proudest noble in Scotland might have been
yet prouder could he have called that child his heir. While, with
breathless anxiety, the Lady of Avenel gazed on his well-formed and
expressive features, a slight shade of colour returned gradually to the
cheek; suspended animation became restored by degrees, the child sighed
deeply, opened his eyes, which to the human countenance produces the
effect of light upon the natural landscape, stretched his arms towards
the Lady, and muttered the word “Mother,” that epithet, of all others,
which is dearest to the female ear.

“God, madam,” said the preacher, “has restored the child to your wishes;
it must be yours so to bring him up, that he may not one day wish that
he had perished in his innocence.”

“It shall be my charge,” said the Lady; and again throwing her arms
around the boy, she overwhelmed him with kisses and caresses, so much
was she agitated by the terror arising from the danger in which he had
been just placed, and by joy at his unexpected deliverance.

“But you are not my mother,” said the boy, recovering his recollection,
and endeavouring, though faintly, to escape from the caresses of the
Lady of Avenel; “you are not my mother,--alas! I have no mother--only I
have dreamt that I had one.”

“I will read the dream for you, my love,” answered the Lady of Avenel;
“and I will be myself your mother. Surely God has heard my wishes,
and, in his own marvellous manner, hath sent me an object on which my
affections may expand themselves.” She looked towards Warden as she
spoke. The preacher hesitated what he should reply to a burst of
passionate feeling, which, perhaps, seemed to him more enthusiastic than
the occasion demanded. In the meanwhile, the large stag-hound, Wolf,
which, dripping wet as he was, had followed his mistress into the
apartment, and had sat by the bedside, a patient and quiet spectator of
all the means used for resuscitation of the being whom he had preserved,
now became impatient of remaining any longer unnoticed, and began to
whine and fawn upon the Lady with his great rough paws.

“Yes,” she said, “good Wolf, and you shall be remembered also for your
day's work; and I will think the more of you for having preserved the
life of a creature so beautiful.”

But Wolf was not quite satisfied with the share of attention which he
thus attracted; he persisted in whining and pawing upon his mistress,
his caresses rendered still more troublesome by his long shaggy hair
being so much and thoroughly wetted, till she desired one of the
domestics, with whom he was familiar, to call the animal out of the
apartment. Wolf resisted every invitation to this purpose, until his
mistress positively commanded him to be gone, in an angry tone; when,
turning towards the bed on which the body still lay, half awake to
sensation, half drowned in the meanders of fluctuating delirium, he
uttered a deep and savage growl, curled up his nose and lips, showing
his full range of white and sharpened teeth, which might have matched
those of an actual wolf, and then, turning round, sullenly followed the
domestic out of the apartment.

“It is singular,” said the Lady, addressing Warden; “the animal is not
only so good-natured to all, but so particularly fond of children. What
can ail him at the little fellow whose life he has saved?”

“Dogs,” replied the preacher, “are but too like the human race in their
foibles, though their instinct be less erring than the reason of poor
mortal man when relying upon his own unassisted powers. Jealousy, my
good lady, is a passion not unknown to them, and they often evince it,
not only with respect to the preferences which they see given by their
masters to individuals of their own species, but even when their rivals
are children. You have caressed that child much and eagerly, and the dog
considers himself as a discarded favourite.”

“It is a strange instinct,” said the Lady; “and from the gravity with
which you mention it, my reverend friend, I would almost say that you
supposed this singular jealousy of my favourite Wolf, was not only well
founded, but justifiable. But perhaps you speak in jest?”

“I seldom jest,” answered the preacher; “life was not lent to us to
be expended in that idle mirth which resembles the crackling of thorns
under the pot. I would only have you derive, if it so please you,
this lesson from what I have said, that the best of our feelings, when
indulged to excess, may give pain to others. There is but one in which
we may indulge to the utmost limit of vehemence of which our bosom is
capable, secure that excess cannot exist in the greatest intensity to
which it can be excited--I mean the love of our Maker.”

“Surely,” said the Lady of Avenel, “we are commanded by the same
authority to love our neighbour?”

“Ay, madam,” said Warden, “but our love to God is to be unbounded--we
are to love him with our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole
strength. The love which the precept commands us to bear to our
neighbour, has affixed to it a direct limit and qualification--we are to
love our neighbour as ourself; as it is elsewhere explained by the great
commandment, that we must do unto him as we would that he should do unto
us. Here there is a limit, and a bound, even to the most praiseworthy of
our affections, so far as they are turned upon sublunary and terrestrial
objects. We are to render to our neighbour, whatever be his rank or
degree, that corresponding portion of affection with which we could
rationally expect we should ourselves be regarded by those standing in
the same relation to us. Hence, neither husband nor wife, neither son
nor daughter, neither friend nor relation, are lawfully to be made the
objects of our idolatry. The Lord our God is a jealous God, and will not
endure that we bestow on the creature that extremity of devotion which
He who made us demands as his own share. I say to you, Lady, that even
in the fairest, and purest, and most honourable feelings of our nature,
there is that original taint of sin which ought to make us pause and
hesitate, ere we indulge them to excess.”

“I understand not this, reverend sir,” said the Lady; “nor do I guess
what I can have now said or done, to draw down on me an admonition which
has something a taste of reproof.”

“Lady,” said Warden, “I crave your pardon, if I have urged aught beyond
the limits of my duty. But consider, whether in the sacred promise to be
not only a protectress, but a mother, to this poor child, your purpose
may meet the wishes of the noble knight your husband. The fondness which
you have lavished on the unfortunate, and, I own, most lovely child,
has met something like a reproof in the bearing of your household
dog.--Displease not your noble husband. Men, as well as animals, are
jealous of the affections of those they love.”

“This is too much, reverend sir,” said the Lady of Avenel, greatly
offended. “You have been long our guest, and have received from the
Knight of Avenel and myself that honour and regard which your character
and profession so justly demand. But I am yet to learn that we have at
any time authorized your interference in our family arrangements, or
placed you as a judge of our conduct towards each other. I pray this may
be forborne in future.”

“Lady,” replied the preacher, with the boldness peculiar to the clergy
of his persuasion at that time, “when you weary of my admonitions--when
I see that my services are no longer acceptable to you, and the noble
knight your husband, I shall know that my Master wills me no longer to
abide here; and, praying for a continuance of his best blessings on your
family I will then, were the season the depth of winter, and the hour
midnight, walk out on yonder waste, and travel forth through these wild
mountains, as lonely and unaided, though far more helpless, than when
I first met your husband in the valley of Glendearg. But while I
remain here, I will not see you err from the true path, no, not a
hair's-breadth, without making the old man's voice and remonstrance
heard.”

“Nay, but,” said the Lady, who both loved and respected the good man,
though sometimes a little offended at what she conceived to be an
exuberant degree of zeal, “we will not part this way, my good friend.
Women are quick and hasty in their feelings; but, believe me, my wishes
and my purposes towards this child are such as both my husband and
you will approve of.” The clergyman bowed, and retreated to his own
apartment.




Chapter the Second.


  How steadfastly he fix'd his eyes on me--
  His dark eyes shining through forgotten tears--
  Then stretch'd his little arms, and call'd me mother!
  What could I do? I took the bantling home--
  I could not tell the imp he had no mother.
                         COUNT BASIL.

When Warden had left the apartment, the Lady of Avenel gave way to the
feelings of tenderness which the sight of the boy, his sudden danger,
and his recent escape, had inspired; and no longer awed by the
sternness, as she deemed it, of the preacher, heaped with caresses the
lovely and interesting child. He was now, in some measure, recovered
from the consequences of his accident, and received passively, though
not without wonder, the tokens of kindness with which he was thus
loaded. The face of the lady was strange to him, and her dress different
and far more sumptuous than any he remembered. But the boy was naturally
of an undaunted temper; and indeed children are generally acute
physiognomists, and not only pleased by that which is beautiful in
itself, but peculiarly quick in distinguishing and replying to the
attentions of those who really love them. If they see a person in
company, though a perfect stranger, who is by nature fond of children,
the little imps seem to discover it by a sort of free-masonry, while the
awkward attempts of those who make advances to them for the purpose of
recommending themselves to the parents, usually fail in attracting their
reciprocal attention. The little boy, therefore, appeared in some degree
sensible of the lady's caresses, and it was with difficulty she withdrew
herself from his pillow, to afford him leisure for necessary repose.

“To whom belongs our little rescued varlet?” was the first question
which the Lady of Avenel put to her handmaiden Lilias, when they had
retired to the hall.

“To an old woman in the hamlet,” said Lilias, “who is even now come so
far as the porter's lodge to inquire concerning his safety. Is it your
pleasure that she be admitted?”

“Is it my pleasure?” said the Lady of Avenel, echoing the question with
a strong accent of displeasure and surprise; “can you make any doubt
of it? What woman but must pity the agony of the mother, whose heart is
throbbing for the safety of a child so lovely!”

“Nay, but, madam,” said Lilias, “this woman is too old to be the mother
of the child; I rather think she must be his grandmother, or some more
distant relation.”

“Be she who she will, Lilias,” replied the Lady, “she must have an
aching heart while the safety of a creature so lovely is uncertain.
Go instantly and bring her hither. Besides, I would willingly learn
something concerning his birth.”

Lilias left the hall, and presently afterwards returned, ushering in a
tall female very poorly dressed, yet with more pretension to decency
and cleanliness than was usually combined with such coarse garments. The
Lady of Avenel knew her figure the instant she presented herself. It was
the fashion of the family, that upon every Sabbath, and on two evenings
in the week besides, Henry Warden preached or lectured in the chapel at
the castle. The extension of the Protestant faith was, upon principle,
as well as in good policy, a primary object with the Knight of Avenel.
The inhabitants of the village were therefore invited to attend upon the
instructions of Henry Warden, and many of them were speedily won to
the doctrine which their master and protector approved. These sermons,
homilies, and lectures, had made a great impression on the mind of the
Abbot Eustace, or Eustatius, and were a sufficient spur to the severity
and sharpness of his controversy with his old fellow-collegiate;
and, ere Queen Mary was dethroned, and while the Catholics still had
considerable authority in the Border provinces, he more than once
threatened to levy his vassals, and assail and level with the earth
that stronghold of heresy the Castle of Avenel. But notwithstanding the
Abbot's impotent resentment, and notwithstanding also the disinclination
of the country to favour the new religion, Henry Warden proceeded
without remission in his labours, and made weekly converts from the
faith of Rome to that of the reformed church. Amongst those who gave
most earnest and constant attendance on his ministry, was the aged
woman, whose form, tall, and otherwise too remarkable to be forgotten,
the Lady had of late observed frequently as being conspicuous among the
little audience. She had indeed more than once desired to know who
that stately-looking woman was, whose appearance was so much above the
poverty of her vestments. But the reply had always been, that she was an
Englishwoman, who was tarrying for a season at the hamlet, and that
no one knew more concerning her. She now asked her after her name and
birth.

“Magdalen Graeme is my name,” said the woman; “I come of the Graemes of
Heathergill, in Nicol Forest, [Footnote: A district of Cumberland, lying
close to the Scottish border.] a people of ancient blood.”

“And what make you,” continued the Lady, “so far distant from your
home?”

“I have no home,” said Magdalen Graeme, “it was burnt by your
Border-riders--my husband and my son were slain--there is not a drop's
blood left in the veins of any one which is of kin to mine.”

“That is no uncommon fate in these wild times, and in this unsettled
land,” said the Lady; “the English hands have been as deeply dyed in our
blood as ever those of Scotsmen have been in yours.”

“You have right to say it, Lady,” answered Magdalen Graeme; “for men
tell of a time when this castle was not strong enough to save your
father's life, or to afford your mother and her infant a place of
refuge. And why ask ye me, then, wherefore I dwell not in mine own home,
and with mine own people?”

“It was indeed an idle question,” answered the Lady, “where misery so
often makes wanderers; but wherefore take refuge in a hostile country?”

“My neighbours were Popish and mass-mongers,” said the old woman; “it
has pleased Heaven to give me a clearer sight of the gospel, and I have
tarried here to enjoy the ministry of that worthy man Henry Warden, who,
to the praise and comfort of many, teacheth the Evangel in truth and in
sincerity.”

“Are you poor?” again demanded the Lady of Avenel.

“You hear me ask alms of no one,” answered the Englishwoman.

Here there was a pause. The manner of the woman was, if not
disrespectful, at least much less than gracious; and she appeared to
give no encouragement to farther communication. The Lady of Avenel
renewed the conversation on a different topic.

“You have heard of the danger in which your boy has been placed?”

“I have, Lady, and how by an especial providence he was rescued from
death. May Heaven make him thankful, and me!”

“What relation do you bear to him?”

“I am his grandmother, lady, if it so please you; the only relation he
hath left upon earth to take charge of him.”

“The burden of his maintenance must necessarily be grievous to you in
your deserted situation?” pursued the Lady.

“I have complained of it to no one,” said Magdalen Graeme, with the same
unmoved, dry, and unconcerned tone of voice, in which she had answered
all the former questions.

“If,” said the Lady of Avenel, “your grandchild could be received into a
noble family, would it not advantage both him and you?”

“Received into a noble family!” said the old woman, drawing herself up,
and bending her brows until her forehead was wrinkled into a frown of
unusual severity; “and for what purpose, I pray you?--to be my lady's
page, or my lord's jackman, to eat broken victuals, and contend with
other menials for the remnants of the master's meal? Would you have
him to fan the flies from my lady's face while she sleeps, to carry
her train while she walks, to hand her trencher when she feeds, to ride
before her on horseback, to walk after her on foot, to sing when she
lists, and to be silent when she bids?--a very weathercock, which,
though furnished in appearance with wings and plumage, cannot soar into
the air--cannot fly from the spot where it is perched, but receives all
its impulse, and performs all its revolutions, obedient to the changeful
breath of a vain woman? When the eagle of Helvellyn perches on the tower
of Lanercost, and turns and changes his place to show how the wind sits,
Roland Graeme shall be what you would make him.”

The woman spoke with a rapidity and vehemence which seemed to have in it
a touch of insanity; and a sudden sense of the danger to which the child
must necessarily be exposed in the charge of such a keeper, increased
the Lady's desire to keep him in the castle if possible.

“You mistake me, dame,” she said, addressing the old woman in a soothing
manner; “I do not wish your boy to be in attendance on myself, but upon
the good knight my husband. Were he himself the son of a belted earl,
he could not better be trained to arms, and all that befits a gentleman,
than by the instructions and discipline of Sir Halbert Glendinning.”

“Ay,” answered the old woman, in the same style of bitter irony, “I know
the wages of that service;--a curse when the corslet is not sufficiently
brightened,--a blow when the girth is not tightly drawn,--to be beaten
because the hounds are at fault,--to be reviled because the foray is
unsuccessful,--to stain his hands for the master's bidding in the blood
alike of beast and of man,--to be a butcher of harmless deer, a murderer
and defacer of God's own image, not at his own pleasure, but at that of
his lord,--to live a brawling ruffian, and a common stabber--exposed to
heat, to cold, to want of food, to all the privations of an anchoret,
not for the love of God, but for the service of Satan,--to die by the
gibbet, or in some obscure skirmish,--to sleep out his brief life
in carnal security, and to awake in the eternal fire, which is never
quenched.”

“Nay,” said the Lady of Avenel, “but to such unhallowed course of life
your grandson will not be here exposed. My husband is just and kind to
those who live under his banner; and you yourself well know, that youth
have here a strict as well as a good preceptor in the person of our
chaplain.”

The old woman appeared to pause.

“You have named,” she said, “the only circumstance which can move me. I
must soon onward, the vision has said it--I must not tarry in the same
spot--I must on,--I must on, it is my weird.--Swear, then, that you will
protect the boy as if he were your own, until I return hither and claim
him, and I will consent for a space to part with him. But especially
swear, he shall not lack the instruction of the godly man who hath
placed the gospel-truth high above those idolatrous shavelings, the
monks and friars.”

“Be satisfied, dame,” said the Lady of Avenel; “the boy shall have as
much care as if he were born of my own blood. Will you see him now?”

“No,” answered the old woman sternly; “to part is enough. I go forth
on my own mission. I will not soften my heart by useless tears and
wailings, as one that is not called to a duty.”

“Will you not accept of something to aid you in your pilgrimage?” said
the Lady of Avenel, putting into her hands two crowns of the sun. The
old woman flung them down on the table.

“Am I of the race of Cain,” she said, “proud Lady, that you offer me
gold in exchange for my own flesh and blood?”

“I had no such meaning,” said the Lady, gently; “nor am I the proud
woman you term me. Alas! my own fortunes might have taught me humility,
even had it not been born with me.”

The old woman seemed somewhat to relax her tone of severity.

“You are of gentle blood,” she said, “else we had not parleyed thus long
together.--You are of gentle blood, and to such,” she added, drawing up
her tall form as she spoke, “pride is as graceful as is the plume upon
the bonnet. But for these pieces of gold, lady, you must needs resume
them. I need not money. I am well provided; and I may not care for
myself, nor think how, or by whom, I shall be sustained. Farewell, and
keep your word. Cause your gates to be opened, and your bridges to be
lowered. I will set forward this very night. When I come again, I will
demand from you a strict account, for I have left with you the jewel of
my life! Sleep will visit me but in snatches, food will not refresh me,
rest will not restore my strength, until I see Roland Graeme. Once more,
farewell.”

“Make your obeisance, dame,” said Lilias to Magdalen Graeme, as she
retired, “make your obeisance to her ladyship, and thank her for her
goodness, as is but fitting and right.”

The old woman turned short around on the officious waiting-maid. “Let
her make her obeisance to me then, and I will return it. Why should
I bend to her?--is it because her kirtle is of silk, and mine of blue
lockeram?--Go to, my lady's waiting-woman. Know that the rank of the man
rates that of the wife, and that she who marries a churl's son, were she
a king's daughter, is but a peasant's bride.”

Lilias was about to reply in great indignation, but her mistress imposed
silence on her, and commanded that the old woman should be safely
conducted to the mainland.

“Conduct her safe!” exclaimed the incensed waiting-woman, while Magdalen
Graeme left the apartment; “I say, duck her in the loch, and then we
will see whether she is witch or not, as every body in the village of
Lochside will say and swear. I marvel your ladyship could bear so long
with her insolence.” But the commands of the Lady were obeyed, and the
old dame, dismissed from the castle, was committed to her fortune. She
kept her word, and did not long abide in that place, leaving the hamlet
on the very night succeeding the interview, and wandering no one asked
whither. The Lady of Avenel inquired under what circumstances she had
appeared among them, but could only learn that she was believed to
be the widow of some man of consequence among the Graemes who then
inhabited the Debateable Land, a name given to a certain portion of
territory which was the frequent subject of dispute betwixt Scotland
and England--that she had suffered great wrong in some of the frequent
forays by which that unfortunate district was wasted, and had been
driven from her dwelling-place. She had arrived in the hamlet no one
knew for what purpose, and was held by some to be a witch, by others a
zealous Protestant, and by others again a Catholic devotee. Her language
was mysterious, and her manners repulsive; and all that could be
collected from her conversation seemed to imply that she was under the
influence either of a spell or of a vow,--there was no saying which,
since she talked as one who acted under a powerful and external agency.

Such were the particulars which the Lady's inquiries were able
to collect concerning Magdalen Graeme, being far too meagre and
contradictory to authorize any satisfactory deduction. In truth, the
miseries of the time, and the various turns of fate incidental to a
frontier country, were perpetually chasing from their habitations those
who had not the means of defence or protection. These wanderers in the
land were too often seen, to excite much attention or sympathy. They
received the cold relief which was extorted by general feelings of
humanity; a little excited in some breasts, and perhaps rather chilled
in others, by the recollection that they who gave the charity to-day
might themselves want it to-morrow. Magdalen Graeme, therefore, came and
departed like a shadow from the neighbourhood of Avenel Castle.

The boy whom Providence, as she thought, had thus strangely placed
under her care, was at once established a favourite with the Lady of
the castle. How could it be otherwise? He became the object of those
affectionate feelings, which, finding formerly no object on which to
expand themselves, had increased the gloom of the castle, and imbittered
the solitude of its mistress. To teach him reading and writing as far as
her skill went, to attend to his childish comforts, to watch his boyish
sports, became the Lady's favourite amusement. In her circumstances,
where the ear only heard the lowing of the cattle from the distant
hills, or the heavy step of the warder as he walked upon his post,
or the half-envied laugh of her maiden as she turned her wheel, the
appearance of the blooming and beautiful boy gave an interest which
can hardly be conceived by those who live amid gayer and busier scenes.
Young Roland was to the Lady of Avenel what the flower, which occupies
the window of some solitary captive, is to the poor wight by whom it is
nursed and cultivated,--something which at once excited and repaid
her care; and in giving the boy her affection, she felt, as it were,
grateful to him for releasing her from the state of dull apathy in
which she had usually found herself during the absence of Sir Halbert
Glendinning.

But even the charms of this blooming favourite were unable to chase the
recurring apprehensions which arose from her husband's procrastinated
return. Soon after Roland Graeme became a resident at the castle, a
groom, despatched by Sir Halbert, brought tidings that business still
delayed the Knight at the Court of Holyrood. The more distant period
which the messenger had assigned for his master's arrival at length
glided away, summer melted into autumn, and autumn was about to give
place to winter, and yet he came not.




Chapter the Third.


 The waning harvest-moon shone broad and bright,
 The warder's horn was heard at dead of night,
 And while the portals-wide were flung,
 With trampling hoofs the rocky pavement rung.
                                         LEYDEN.

“And you, too, would be a soldier, Roland?” said the Lady of Avenel
to her young charge, while, seated on a stone chair at one end of the
battlements, she saw the boy attempt, with a long stick, to mimic the
motions of the warder, as he alternately shouldered, or ported, or
sloped pike.

“Yes, Lady,” said the boy,--for he was now familiar, and replied to her
questions with readiness and alacrity,-“a soldier will I be; for there
ne'er was gentleman but who belted him with the brand.”

“Thou a gentleman!” said Lilias, who, as usual, was in attendance; “such
a gentleman as I would make of a bean-cod with a rusty knife.”

“Nay, chide him not, Lilias,” said the Lady of Avenel, “for, beshrew me,
but I think he comes of gentle blood--see how it musters in his face at
your injurious reproof.”

“Had I my will, madam,” answered Lilias, “a good birchen wand should
make his colour muster to better purpose still.”

“On my word, Lilias,” said the Lady, “one would think you had received
harm from the poor boy--or is he so far on the frosty side of your
favour because he enjoys the sunny side of mine?”

“Over heavens forbode, my Lady!” answered Lilias; “I have lived too long
with gentles, I praise my stars for it, to fight with either follies or
fantasies, whether they relate to beast, bird, or boy.”

Lilias was a favourite in her own class, a spoiled domestic, and often
accustomed to take more licence than her mistress was at all times
willing to encourage. But what did not please the Lady of Avenel, she
did not choose to hear, and thus it was on the present occasion. She
resolved to look more close and sharply after the boy, who had hitherto
been committed chiefly to the management of Lilias. He must, she
thought, be born of gentle blood; it were shame to think otherwise of
a form so noble, and features so fair;--the very wildness in which
he occasionally indulged, his contempt of danger, and impatience of
restraint, had in them something noble;--assuredly the child was born of
high rank. Such was her conclusion, and she acted upon it accordingly.
The domestics around her, less jealous, or less scrupulous than Lilias,
acted as servants usually do, following the bias, and flattering, for
their own purposes, the humour of the Lady; and the boy soon took on him
those airs of superiority, which the sight of habitual deference seldom
fails to inspire. It seemed, in truth, as if to command were his natural
sphere, so easily did he use himself to exact and receive compliance
with his humours. The chaplain, indeed, might have interposed to check
the air of assumption which Roland Graeme so readily indulged, and
most probably would have willingly rendered him that favour; but the
necessity of adjusting with his brethren some disputed points of church
discipline had withdrawn him for some time from the castle, and detained
him in a distant part of the kingdom.

Matters stood thus in the castle of Avenel, when a winded bugle sent its
shrill and prolonged notes from the shore of the lake, and was replied
to cheerily by the signal of the warder. The Lady of Avenel knew the
sounds of her husband, and rushed to the window of the apartment in
which she was sitting. A band of about thirty spearmen, with a pennon
displayed before them, winded along the indented shores of the lake,
and approached the causeway. A single horseman rode at the head of the
party, his bright arms catching a glance of the October sun as he moved
steadily along. Even at that distance, the Lady recognized the lofty
plume, bearing the mingled colours of her own liveries and those of
Glendonwyne, blended with the holly-branch; and the firm seat and
dignified demeanour of the rider, joined to the stately motion of the
dark-brown steed, sufficiently announced Halbert Glendinning.

The Lady's first thought was that of rapturous joy at her husband's
return--her second was connected with a fear which had sometimes
intruded itself, that he might not altogether approve the peculiar
distinction with which she had treated her orphan ward. In this fear
there was implied a consciousness, that the favour she had shown him was
excessive; for Halbert Glendinning was at least as gentle and indulgent,
as he was firm and rational in the intercourse of his household; and to
her in particular, his conduct had ever been most affectionately tender.

Yet she did fear, that, on the present occasion, her conduct might incur
Sir Halbert's censure; and hastily resolving that she would not mention,
the anecdote of the boy until the next day, she ordered him to be
withdrawn from the apartment by Lilias.

“I will not go with Lilias, madam,” answered the spoiled child, who
had more than once carried his point by perseverance, and who, like his
betters, delighted in the exercise of such authority,--“I will not go to
Lilias's gousty room--I will stay and see that brave warrior who comes
riding so gallantly along the drawbridge.”

“You must not stay, Roland,” said the Lady, more positively than she
usually spoke to her little favourite.

“I will,” reiterated the boy, who had already felt his consequence, and
the probable chance of success.

“You _will_, Roland!” answered the Lady, “what manner of word is that? I
tell you, you must go.”

“_Will_,” answered the forward boy, “is a word for a man, and _must_ is
no word for a lady.”

“You are saucy, sirrah,” said the Lady--“Lilias, take him with you
instantly.”

“I always thought,” said Lilias, smiling, as she seized the reluctant
boy by the arm, “that my young master must give place to my old one.”

“And you, too, are malapert, mistress!” said the Lady; “hath the moon
changed, that ye all of you thus forget yourselves?”

Lilias made no reply, but led off the boy, who, too proud to offer
unavailing resistance, darted at his benefactress a glance, which
intimated plainly, how willingly he would have defied her authority, had
he possessed the power to make good his point.

The Lady of Avenel was vexed to find how much this trifling circumstance
had discomposed her, at the moment when she ought naturally to have
been entirely engrossed by her husband's return. But we do not recover
composure by the mere feeling that agitation is mistimed. The glow of
displeasure had not left the Lady's cheek, her ruffled deportment was
not yet entirely composed, when her husband, unhelmeted, but still
wearing the rest of his arms, entered the apartment. His appearance
banished the thoughts of every thing else; she rushed to him, clasped
his iron-sheathed frame in her arms, and kissed his martial and manly
face with an affection which was at once evident and sincere. The
warrior returned her embrace and her caress with the same fondness; for
the time which had passed since their union had diminished its romantic
ardour, perhaps, but it had rather increased its rational tenderness,
and Sir Halbert Glendinning's long and frequent absences from his castle
had prevented affection from degenerating by habit into indifference.

When the first eager greetings were paid and received, the Lady
gazed fondly on her husband's face as she remarked, “You are altered,
Halbert--you have ridden hard and far to-day, or you have been ill?”

“I have been well, Mary,” answered the Knight, “passing well have
I been; and a long ride is to me, thou well knowest, but a thing of
constant custom. Those who are born noble may slumber out their lives
within the walls of their castles and manor-houses; but he who hath
achieved nobility by his own deeds must ever be in the saddle, to show
that he merits his advancement.”

While he spoke thus, the Lady gazed fondly on him, as if endeavouring
to read his inmost soul; for the tone in which he spoke was that of
melancholy depression.

Sir Halbert Glendinning was the same, yet a different person from what
he had appeared in his early years. The fiery freedom of the aspiring
youth had given place to the steady and stern composure of the approved
soldier and skilful politician. There were deep traces of care on those
noble features, over which each emotion used formerly to pass, like
light clouds across a summer sky. That sky was now, not perhaps clouded,
but still and grave, like that of the sober autumn evening. The forehead
was higher and more bare than in early youth, and the locks which still
clustered thick and dark on the warrior's head, were worn away at the
temples, not by age, but by the constant pressure of the steel cap, or
helmet. His beard, according to the fashion of the time, grew short and
thick, and was turned into mustaches on the upper lip, and peaked at the
extremity. The cheek, weather-beaten and embrowned, had lost the glow
of youth, but showed the vigorous complexion of active and confirmed
manhood. Halbert Glendinning was, in a word, a knight to ride at a
king's right hand, to bear his banner in war, and to be his counsellor
in time of peace; for his looks expressed the considerate firmness which
can resolve wisely and dare boldly. Still, over these noble features,
there now spread an air of dejection, of which, perhaps, the owner was
not conscious, but which did not escape the observation of his anxious
and affectionate partner.

“Something has happened, or is about to happen,” said the Lady of
Avenel; “this sadness sits not on your brow without cause--misfortune,
national or particular, must needs be at hand.”

“There is nothing new that I wot of,” said Halbert Glendinning; “but
there is little of evil which can befall a kingdom, that may not be
apprehended in this unhappy and divided realm.”

“Nay, then,” said the Lady, “I see there hath really been some fatal
work on foot. My Lord of Murray has not so long detained you at
Holyrood, save that he wanted your help in some weighty purpose.”

“I have not been at Holyrood, Mary,” answered the Knight; “I have been
several weeks abroad.”

“Abroad! and sent me no word?” replied the Lady.

“What would the knowledge have availed, but to have rendered you
unhappy, my love?” replied the Knight; “your thoughts would have
converted the slightest breeze that curled your own lake, into a tempest
raging in the German ocean.”

“And have you then really crossed the sea?” said the Lady, to whom the
very idea of an element which she had never seen conveyed notions of
terror and of wonder,--“really left your own native land, and trodden
distant shores, where the Scottish tongue is unheard and unknown?”

“Really, and really,” said the Knight, taking her hand in affectionate
playfulness, “I have done this marvellous deed--have rolled on the ocean
for three days and three nights, with the deep green waves dashing by
the side of my pillow, and but a thin plank to divide me from it.”

“Indeed, my Halbert,” said the Lady, “that was a tempting of Divine
Providence. I never bade you unbuckle the sword from your side, or lay
the lance from your hand--I never bade you sit still when your honour
called you to rise and ride; but are not blade and spear dangers enough
for one man's life, and why would you trust rough waves and raging
seas?”

“We have in Germany, and in the Low Countries, as they are called,”
 answered Glendinning, “men who are united with us in faith, and with
whom it is fitting we should unite in alliance. To some of these I was
despatched on business as important as it was secret. I went in safety,
and I returned in security; there is more danger to a man's life betwixt
this and Holyrood, than are in all the seas that wash the lowlands of
Holland.”

“And the country, my Halbert, and the people,” said the Lady, “are they
like our kindly Scots? or what bearing have they to strangers?”

“They are a people, Mary, strong in their wealth, which renders all
other nations weak, and weak in those arts of war by which other nations
are strong.”

“I do not understand you,” said the Lady.

“The Hollander and the Fleming, Mary, pour forth their spirit in
trade, and not in war; their wealth purchases them the arms of foreign
soldiers, by whose aid they defend it. They erect dikes on the sea-shore
to protect the land which they have won, and they levy regiments of the
stubborn Switzers and hardy Germans to protect the treasures which they
have amassed. And thus they are strong in their weakness; for the very
wealth which tempts their masters to despoil them, arms strangers in
their behalf.”

“The slothful hinds!” exclaimed Mary, thinking and feeling like a
Scotswoman of the period; “have they hands, and fight not for the land
which bore them? They should be notched off at the elbow!”

“Nay, that were but hard justice,” answered her husband; “for their
hands serve their country, though not in battle, like ours. Look at
these barren hills, Mary, and at that deep winding vale by which the
cattle are even now returning from their scanty browse. The hand of the
industrious Fleming would cover these mountains with wood, and raise
corn where we now see a starved and scanty sward of heath and ling. It
grieves me, Mary, when I look on that land, and think what benefit it
might receive from such men as I have lately seen--men who seek not
the idle fame derived from dead ancestors, or the bloody renown won in
modern broils, but tread along the land, as preservers and improvers,
not as tyrants and destroyers.”

“These amendments would here be but a vain fancy, my Halbert,” answered
the Lady of Avenel; “the trees would be burned by the English foemen,
ere they ceased to be shrubs, and the grain that you raised would be
gathered in by the first neighbour that possessed more riders than
follow your train. Why should you repine at this? The fate that made
you Scotsman by birth, gave you head, and heart, and hand, to uphold the
name as it must needs be upheld.”

“It gave _me_ no name to uphold,” said Halbert, pacing the floor slowly;
“my arm has been foremost in every strife--my voice has been heard in
every council, nor have the wisest rebuked me. The crafty Lethington,
the deep and dark Morton, have held secret council with me, and Grange
and Lindsay have owned, that in the field I did the devoir of a gallant
knight--but let the emergence be passed when they need my head and hand,
and they only know me as son of the obscure portioner of Glendearg.”

This was a theme which the Lady always dreaded; for the rank conferred
on her husband, the favour in which he was held by the powerful Earl of
Murray, and the high talents by which he vindicated his right to
that rank and that favour, were qualities which rather increased than
diminished the envy which was harboured against Sir Halbert Glendinning
among a proud aristocracy, as a person originally of inferior and
obscure birth, who had risen to his present eminence solely by his
personal merit. The natural firmness of his mind did not enable him to
despise the ideal advantages of a higher pedigree, which were held in
such universal esteem by all with whom he conversed; and so open are
the noblest minds to jealous inconsistencies, that there were moments in
which he felt mortified that his lady should possess those advantages
of birth and high descent which he himself did not enjoy, and regretted
that his importance as the proprietor of Avenel was qualified by his
possessing it only as the husband of the heiress. He was not so unjust
as to permit any unworthy feelings to retain permanent possession of his
mind, but yet they recurred from time to time, and did not escape his
lady's anxious observation.

“Had we been blessed with children,” she was wont on such occasions
to say to herself, “had our blood been united in a son who might have
joined my advantages of descent with my husband's personal worth, these
painful and irksome reflections had not disturbed our union even for a
moment. But the existence of such an heir, in whom our affections, as
well as our pretensions, might have centred, has been denied to us.”

With such mutual feelings, it cannot be wondered that it gave the
Lady pain to hear her husband verging towards this topic of mutual
discontent. On the present, as on other similar occasions, she
endeavoured to divert the knight's thoughts from this painful channel.

“How can you,” she said, “suffer yourself to dwell upon things which
profit nothing? Have you indeed no name to uphold? You, the good and the
brave, the wise in council, and the strong in battle, have you not
to support the reputation your own deeds have won, a reputation more
honourable than mere ancestry can supply? Good men love and honour you,
the wicked fear, and the turbulent obey you; and is it not necessary you
should exert yourself to ensure the endurance of that love, that honour,
and wholesome fear, and that necessary obedience?”

As she thus spoke, the eye of her husband caught from hers courage and
comfort, and it lightened as he took her hand and replied, “It is
most true, my Mary, and I deserve thy rebuke, who forget what I am, in
repining because I am not what I cannot be. I am now what the most famed
ancestors of those I envy were, the mean man raised into eminence by
his own exertions; and sure it is a boast as honourable to have those
capacities which are necessary to the foundation of a family, as to be
descended from one who possessed them some centuries before. The Hay of
Loncarty, who bequeathed his bloody yoke to his lineage,--the 'dark gray
man,' who first founded the house of Douglas, had yet less of ancestry
to boast than I have. For thou knowest, Mary, that my name derives
itself from a line of ancient warriors, although my immediate
forefathers preferred the humble station in which thou didst first
find them; and war and counsel are not less proper to the house of
Glendonwyne, even, in its most remote descendants, than to the proudest
of their baronage.” [Footnote: This was a house of ancient descent and
superior consequence, including persons who fought at Bannockburn and
Otterburn, and closely connected by alliance and friendship with the
great Earls of Douglas. The Knight in this story argues as most Scotsmen
would do in his situation, for all of the same clan are popularly
considered as descended from the same stock, and as having a right to
the ancestral honor of the chief branch. This opinion, though sometimes
ideal, is so strong even at this day of innovation, that it may be
observed as a national difference between my countrymen and the English.
If you ask an Englishman of good birth, whether a person of the same
name be connected with him, he answers (if _in dubio._) “No--he is a
mere namesake.” Ask a similar question of a Scot, (I mean a Scotsman,)
he replies--“He is one of our clan; I daresay there is a relationship,
though I do not know how distant.” The Englishman thinks of
discountenancing a species of rivalry in society; the Scotsman's answer
is grounded on the ancient idea of strengthening the clan.]

He strode across the hall as he spoke; and the Lady smiled internally
to observe how much his mind dwelt upon the prerogatives of birth, and
endeavoured to establish his claims, however remote, to a share in them,
at the very moment when he affected to hold them in contempt. It will
easily be guessed, however, that she permitted no symptom to escape
her that could show she was sensible of the weakness of her husband, a
perspicacity which perhaps his proud spirit could not very easily have
brooked.

As he returned from the extremity of the hall, to which he had stalked
while in the act of vindicating the title of the house of Glendonwyne in
its most remote branches to the full privileges of aristocracy, “Where,”
 he said, “is Wolf? I have not seen him since my return, and he was
usually the first to welcome my home-coming.”

“Wolf,” said the Lady, with a slight degree of embarrassment, for which
perhaps, she would have found it difficult to assign any reason even to
herself, “Wolf is chained up for the present. He hath been surly to my
page.”

“Wolf chained up--and Wolf surly to your page!” answered Sir Halbert
Glendinning; “Wolf never was surly to any one; and the chain will either
break his spirit or render him savage--So ho, there--set Wolf free
directly.”

He was obeyed; and the huge dog rushed into the hall, disturbing, by his
unwieldy and boisterous gambols, the whole economy of reels, rocks, and
distaffs, with which the maidens of the household were employed when the
arrival of their lord was a signal to them to withdraw, and extracting
from Lilias, who was summoned to put them again in order, the natural
observation, “That the Laird's pet was as troublesome as the lady's
page.”

“And who is this page, Mary?” said the Knight, his attention again
called to the subject by the observation of the waiting-woman,--“Who
is this page, whom every one seems to weigh in the balance with my
old friend and favourite, Wolf?--When did you aspire to the dignity of
keeping a page, or who is the boy?”

“I trust, my Halbert,” said the Lady, not without a blush, “you will
not think your wife entitled to less attendance than other ladies of her
quality?”

“Nay, Dame Mary,” answered the Knight, “it is enough you desire such
an attendant.--Yet I have never loved to nurse such useless menials--a
lady's page--it may well suit the proud English dames to have a slender
youth to bear their trains from bower to hall, fan them when they
slumber, and touch the lute for them when they please to listen; but our
Scottish matrons were wont to be above such vanities, and our Scottish
youth ought to be bred to the spear and the stirrup.”

“Nay, but, my husband,” said the Lady, “I did but jest when I called
this boy my page; he is in sooth a little orphan whom we saved from
perishing in the lake, and whom I have since kept in the castle out of
charity.--Lilias, bring little Roland hither.”

Roland entered accordingly, and, flying to the Lady's side, took hold
of the plaits of her gown, and then turned round, and gazed with
an attention not unmingled with fear, upon the stately form of the
Knight.--“Roland,” said the Lady, “go kiss the hand of the noble Knight,
and ask him to be thy protector.”--But Roland obeyed not, and, keeping
his station, continued to gaze fixedly and timidly on Sir Halbert
Glendinning.--“Go to the Knight, boy,” said the Lady; “what dost thou
fear, child? Go, kiss Sir Halbert's hand.”

“I will kiss no hand save yours, Lady,” answered the boy.

“Nay, but do as you are commanded, child,” replied the Lady.--“He is
dashed by your presence,” she said, apologizing to her husband; “but is
he not a handsome boy?”

“And so is Wolf,” said Sir Halbert, as he patted his huge four-footed
favourite, “a handsome dog; but he has this double advantage over your
new favourite, that he does what he is commanded, and hears not when he
is praised.”

“Nay, now you are displeased with me,” replied the Lady; “and yet why
should you be so? There is nothing wrong in relieving the distressed
orphan, or in loving that which is in itself lovely and deserving of
affection. But you have seen Mr. Warden at Edinburgh, and he has set you
against the poor boy.”

“My dear Mary,” answered her husband, “Mr. Warden better knows his place
than to presume to interfere either in your affairs or mine. I neither
blame your relieving this boy, nor your kindness for him. But, I think,
considering his birth and prospects, you ought not to treat him with
injudicious fondness, which can only end in rendering him unfit for the
humble situation to which Heaven has designed him.”

“Nay, but, my Halbert, do but look at the boy,” said the Lady, “and see
whether he has not the air of being intended by Heaven for something
nobler than a mere peasant. May he not be designed, as others have been,
to rise out of a humble situation into honour and eminence?”

Thus far had she proceeded, when the consciousness that she was treading
upon delicate ground at once occurred to her, and induced her to take
the most natural, but the worst of all courses in such occasions,
whether in conversation or in an actual bog, namely, that of stopping
suddenly short in the illustration which she had commenced. Her brow
crimsoned, and that of Sir Halbert Glendinning was slightly overcast.
But it was only for an instant; for he was incapable of mistaking his
lady's meaning, or supposing that she meant intentional disrespect to
him.

“Be it as you please, my love,” he replied; “I owe you too much to
contradict you in aught which may render your solitary mode of life
more endurable. Make of this youth what you will, and you have my
full authority for doing so. But remember he is your charge, not
mine--remember he hath limbs to do man's service, a soul and a tongue
to worship God; breed him, therefore, to be true to his country and to
Heaven; and for the rest, dispose of him as you list--it is, and shall
rest, your own matter.”

This conversation decided the fate of Roland Graeme, who from
thence-forward was little noticed by the master of the mansion of
Avenel, but indulged and favoured by its mistress.

This situation led to many important consequences, and, in truth, tended
to bring forth the character of the youth in all its broad lights and
deep shadows. As the Knight himself seemed tacitly to disclaim alike
interest and control over the immediate favourite of his lady, young
Roland was, by circumstances, exempted from the strict discipline to
which, as the retainer of a Scottish man of rank, he would otherwise
have been subjected, according to all the rigour of the age. But the
steward, or master of the household--such was the proud title assumed
by the head domestic of each petty baron--deemed it not advisable to
interfere with the favourite of the Lady, and especially since she had
brought the estate into the present family. Master Jasper Wingate was a
man experienced, as he often boasted, in the ways of great families, and
knew how to keep the steerage even when the wind and tide chanced to be
in contradiction.

This prudent personage winked at much, and avoided giving opportunity
for farther offence, by requesting little of Roland Graeme beyond
the degree of attention which he was himself disposed to pay; rightly
conjecturing, that however lowly the place which the youth might hold in
the favour of the Knight of Avenel, still to make an evil report of
him would make an enemy of the Lady, without securing the favour of her
husband. With these prudential considerations, and doubtless not without
an eye to his own ease and convenience, he taught the boy as much, and
only as much, as he chose to learn, readily admitting whatever apology
it pleased his pupil to allege in excuse for idleness or negligence.
As the other persons in the castle, to whom such tasks were delegated,
readily imitated the prudential conduct of the major-domo, there was
little control used towards Roland Graeme, who, of course, learned no
more than what a very active mind, and a total impatience of absolute
idleness led him to acquire upon his own account, and by dint of his
own exertions. The latter were especially earnest, when the Lady herself
condescended to be his tutress, or to examine his progress.

It followed also from his quality as my Lady's favourite, that Roland
was viewed with no peculiar good-will by the followers of the Knight,
many of whom, of the same age, and apparently similar origin, with the
fortunate page, were subjected to severe observance of the ancient and
rigorous discipline of a feudal retainer. To these, Roland Graeme was
of course an object of envy, and, in consequence, of dislike and
detraction; but the youth possessed qualities which it was impossible
to depreciate. Pride, and a sense of early ambition, did for him what
severity and constant instruction did for others. In truth, the youthful
Roland displayed that early flexibility both of body and mind, which
renders exercise, either mental or bodily, rather matter of sport than
of study; and it seemed as if he acquired accidentally, and by starts,
those accomplishments, which earnest and constant instruction, enforced
by frequent reproof and occasional chastisement, had taught to others.
Such military exercises, such lessons of the period, as he found it
agreeable or convenient to apply to, he learned so perfectly, as
to confound those who were ignorant how often the want of constant
application is compensated by vivacity of talent and ardent enthusiasm.
The lads, therefore, who were more regularly trained to arms, to
horsemanship, and to other necessary exercises of the period, while they
envied Roland Graeme the indulgence or negligence with which he
seemed to be treated, had little reason to boast of their own superior
acquirements; a few hours, with the powerful exertion of a most
energetic will, seemed to do for him more than the regular instruction
of weeks could accomplish for others.

Under these advantages, if, indeed, they were to be termed such,
the character of young Roland began to develope itself. It was bold,
peremptory, decisive, and overbearing; generous, if neither withstood
nor contradicted; vehement and passionate, if censured or opposed. He
seemed to consider himself as attached to no one, and responsible to
no one, except his mistress, and even over her mind he had gradually
acquired that species of ascendancy which indulgence is so apt to
occasion. And although the immediate followers and dependents of Sir
Halbert Glendinning saw his ascendancy with jealousy, and often took
occasion to mortify his vanity, there wanted not those who were willing
to acquire the favour of the Lady of Avenel by humouring and taking part
with the youth whom she protected; for although a favourite, as the poet
assures us, has no friend, he seldom fails to have both followers and
flatterers.

The partisans of Roland Graeme were chiefly to be found amongst the
inhabitants of the little hamlet on the shore of the lake. These
villagers, who were sometimes tempted to compare their own situation
with that of the immediate and constant followers of the Knight, who
attended him on his frequent journeys to Edinburgh and elsewhere,
delighted in considering and representing themselves as more properly
the subjects of the Lady of Avenel than of her husband. It is true, her
wisdom and affection on all occasions discountenanced the distinction
which was here implied; but the villagers persisted in thinking it must
be agreeable to her to enjoy their peculiar and undivided homage, or at
least in acting as if they thought so; and one chief mode by which they
evinced their sentiments, was by the respect they paid to young Roland
Graeme, the favourite attendant of the descendant of their ancient
lords. This was a mode of flattery too pleasing to encounter rebuke or
censure; and the opportunity which it afforded the youth to form, as
it were, a party of his own within the limits of the ancient barony
of Avenel, added not a little to the audacity and decisive tone of a
character, which was by nature bold, impetuous, and incontrollable.

Of the two members of the household who had manifested an early jealousy
of Roland Graeme, the prejudices of Wolf were easily overcome; and in
process of time the noble dog slept with Bran, Luath, and the celebrated
hounds of ancient days. But Mr. Warden, the chaplain, lived, and
retained his dislike to the youth. That good man, single-minded and
benevolent as he really was, entertained rather more than a reasonable
idea of the respect due to him as a minister, and exacted from the
inhabitants of the castle more deference than the haughty young page,
proud of his mistress's favour, and petulant from youth and situation,
was at all times willing to pay. His bold and free demeanour, his
attachment to rich dress and decoration, his inaptitude to receive
instruction, and his hardening himself against rebuke, were
circumstances which induced the good old man, with more haste than
charity, to set the forward page down as a vessel of wrath, and to
presage that the youth nursed that pride and haughtiness of spirit which
goes before ruin and destruction. On the other hand, Roland evinced
at times a marked dislike, and even something like contempt, of
the chaplain. Most of the attendants and followers of Sir Halbert
Glendinning entertained the same charitable thoughts as the reverend
Mr. Warden; but while Roland was favoured by their lady, and endured by
their lord, they saw no policy in making their opinions public.

Roland Graeme was sufficiently sensible of the unpleasant situation in
which he stood; but in the haughtiness of his heart he retorted upon the
other domestics the distant, cold, and sarcastic manner in which they
treated him, assumed an air of superiority which compelled the most
obstinate to obedience, and had the satisfaction at least to be dreaded,
if he was heartily hated.

The chaplain's marked dislike had the effect of recommending him to
the attention of Sir Halbert's brother, Edward, who now, under the
conventual appellation of Father Ambrose, continued to be one of the
few monks who, with the Abbot Eustatius, had, notwithstanding the nearly
total downfall of their faith under the regency of Murray, been still
permitted to linger in the cloisters at Kennaquhair. Respect to Sir
Halbert had prevented their being altogether driven out of the Abbey,
though their order was now in a great measure suppressed, and they were
interdicted the public exercise of their ritual, and only allowed for
their support a small pension out of their once splendid revenues.
Father Ambrose, thus situated, was an occasional, though very rare
visitant, at the Castle of Avenel, and was at such times observed to pay
particular attention to Roland Graeme, who seemed to return it with more
depth of feeling than consisted with his usual habits.

Thus situated, years glided on, during which the Knight of Avenel
continued to act a frequent and important part in the convulsions of his
distracted country; while young Graeme anticipated, both in wishes and
personal accomplishments, the age which should enable him to emerge from
the obscurity of his present situation.




Chapter the Fourth.


  Amid their cups that freely flow'd,
    Their revelry and mirth,
  A youthful lord tax'd Valentine
    With base and doubtful birth.
                 VALENTINE AND ORSON.

When Roland Graeme was a youth about seventeen years of age, he
chanced one summer morning to descend to the mew in which Sir Halbert
Glendinning kept his hawks, in order to superintend the training of an
eyas, or young hawk, which he himself, at the imminent risk of neck and
limbs, had taken from the celebrated eyry in the neighborhood, called
Gledscraig. As he was by no means satisfied with the attention which had
been bestowed on his favourite bird, he was not slack in testifying his
displeasure to the falconer's lad, whose duty it was to have attended
upon it.

“What, ho! sir knave,” exclaimed Roland, “is it thus you feed the
eyas with unwashed meat, as if you were gorging the foul brancher of a
worthless hoodie-crow? by the mass, and thou hast neglected its castings
also for these two days! Think'st thou I ventured my neck to bring the
bird down from the crag, that thou shouldst spoil him by thy neglect?”
 And to add force to his remonstrances, he conferred a cuff or two on the
negligent attendant of the hawks, who, shouting rather louder than was
necessary under all the circumstances, brought the master falconer to
his assistance.

Adam Woodcock, the falconer of Avenel, was an Englishman by birth, but
so long in the service of Glendinning, that he had lost much of his
notional attachment in that which he had formed to his master. He was
a favourite in his department, jealous and conceited of his skill, as
masters of the game usually are; for the rest of his character he was
a jester and a parcel poet, (qualities which by no means abated his
natural conceit,) a jolly fellow, who, though a sound Protestant, loved
a flagon of ale better than a long sermon, a stout man of his hands
when need required, true to his master, and a little presuming on his
interest with him.

Adam Woodcock, such as we have described him, by no means relished the
freedom used by young Graeme, in chastising his assistant. “Hey, hey,
my Lady's page,” said he, stepping between his own boy and Roland, “fair
and softly, an it like your gilt jacket--hands off is fair play--if my
boy has done amiss, I can beat him myself, and then you may keep your
hands soft.”

“I will beat him and thee too,” answered Roland, without hesitation, “an
you look not better after your business. See how the bird is cast away
between you. I found the careless lurdane feeding him with unwashed
flesh, and she an eyas.” [Footnote: There is a difference amongst
authorities how long the nestling hawk should be fed with flesh which
has previously been washed.]

“Go to,” said the falconer, “thou art but an eyas thyself, child
Roland.--What knowest thou of feeding? I say that the eyas should have
her meat unwashed, until she becomes a brancher--'twere the ready way
to give her the frounce, to wash her meat sooner, and so knows every one
who knows a gled from a falcon.”

“It is thine own laziness, thou false English blood, that dost nothing
but drink and sleep,” retorted the page, “and leaves that lither lad to
do the work, which he minds as little as thou.”

“And am I so idle then,” said the falconer, “that have three cast of
hawks to look after, at perch and mew, and to fly them in the field
to boot?--and is my Lady's page so busy a man that he must take me
up short?--and am I of false English blood?--I marvel what blood thou
art--neither Englander nor Scot--fish nor flesh--a bastard from the
Debateable Land, without either kith, kin, or ally!--Marry, out upon
thee, foul kite, that would fain be a tercel gentle!”

The reply to this sarcasm was a box on the ear, so well applied, that it
overthrew the falconer into the cistern in which water was kept for
the benefit of the hawks. Up started Adam Woodcock, his wrath no way
appeased by the cold immersion, and seizing on a truncheon which stood
by, would have soon requited the injury he had received, had not Roland
laid his hand on his poniard, and sworn by all that was sacred, that
if he offered a stroke towards him, he would sheath the blade in his
bowels. The noise was now so great, that more than one of the household
came in, and amongst others the major-domo, a grave personage, already
mentioned, whose gold chain and white wand intimated his authority.
At the appearance of this dignitary, the strife was for the present
appeased. He embraced, however, so favourable an opportunity, to read
Roland Graeme a shrewd lecture on the impropriety of his deportment to
his fellow-menials, and to assure him, that, should he communicate this
fray to his master, (who, though now on one of his frequent expeditions,
was speedily expected to return,) which but for respect to his Lady he
would most certainly do, the residence of the culprit in the Castle of
Avenel would be but of brief duration. “But, however,” added the prudent
master of the household, “I will report the matter first to my Lady.”

“Very just, very right, Master Wingate,” exclaimed several voices
together; “my Lady will consider if daggers, are to be drawn on us for
every idle word, and whether we are to live in a well-ordered household,
where there is the fear of God, or amidst drawn dirks and sharp knives.”

The object of this general resentment darted an angry glance around him,
and suppressing with difficulty the desire which urged him to reply
in furious or in contemptuous language, returned his dagger into his
scabbard, looked disdainfully around upon the assembled menials, turned
short upon his heel, and pushing aside those who stood betwixt him and
the door, left the apartment.

“This will be no tree for my nest,” said the falconer, “if this
cock-sparrow is to crow over us as he seems to do.”

“He struck me with his switch yesterday,” said one of the grooms,
“because the tail of his worship's gelding was not trimmed altogether so
as suited his humour.”

“And I promise you,” said the laundress, “my young master will stick
nothing to call an honest woman slut and quean, if there be but a speck
of soot upon his band-collar.”

“If Master Wingate do not his errand to my Lady,” was the general
result, “there will be no tarrying in the same house with Roland
Graeme.”

The master of the household heard them all for some time, and then,
motioning for universal silence, he addressed them with all the
dignity of Malvolio himself.--“My masters,--not forgetting you, my
mistresses,--do not think the worse of me that I proceed with as much
care as haste in this matter. Our master is a gallant knight, and will
have his sway at home and abroad, in wood and field, in hall and bower,
as the saying is. Our Lady, my benison upon her, is also a noble person
of long descent, and rightful heir of this place and barony, and she
also loves her will; as for that matter, show me the woman who doth
not. Now, she hath favoured, doth favour, and will favour, this
jack-an-ape,--for what good part about him I know not, save that as one
noble lady will love a messan dog, and another a screaming popinjay,
and a third a Barbary ape, so doth it please our noble dame to set her
affections upon this stray elf of a page, for nought that I can think
of, save that she--was the cause of his being saved (the more's the
pity) from drowning.” And here Master Wingate made a pause.

“I would have been his caution for a gray groat against salt water or
fresh,” said Roland's adversary, the falconer; “marry, if he crack not a
rope for stabbing or for snatching, I will be content never to hood hawk
again.”

“Peace, Adam Woodcock,” said Wingate, waving his hand; “I prithee, peace
man--Now, my Lady liking this springald, as aforesaid, differs therein
from my Lord, who loves never a bone in his skin. Now, is it for me to
stir up strife betwixt them, and put as'twere my finger betwixt the bark
and the tree, on account of a pragmatical youngster, whom, nevertheless,
I would willingly see whipped forth of the barony? Have patience, and
this boil will break without our meddling. I have been in service since
I wore a beard on my chin, till now that that beard is turned gray, and
I have seldom known any one better themselves, even by taking the lady's
part against the lord's; but never one who did not dirk himself, if he
took the lord's against the lady's.”

“And so,” said Lilias, “we are to be crowed over, every one of us, men
and women, cock and hen, by this little upstart?--I will try titles with
him first, I promise you.--I fancy, Master Wingate, for as wise as you
look, you will be pleased to tell what you have seen to-day, if my lady
commands you?”

“To speak the truth when my lady commands me,” answered the prudential
major-domo, “is in some measure my duty, Mistress Lilias; always
providing for and excepting those cases in which it cannot be
spoken without breeding mischief and inconvenience to myself or my
fellow-servants; for the tongue of a tale-bearer breaketh bones as well
as Jeddart-staff.” [Footnote: A species of battle-axe, so called as
being in especial use in that ancient burgh, whose armorial bearing
still represent an armed horseman brandishing such a weapon.]

“But this imp of Satan is none of your friends or fellow-servants,” said
Lilias; “and I trust you mean not to stand up for him against the whole
family besides?”

“Credit me, Mrs. Lilias,” replied the senior, “should I see the time
fitting, I would, with right good-will give him a lick with the rough
side of my tongue.”

“Enough said, Master Wingate,” answered Lilias; “then trust me his song
shall soon be laid. If my mistress does not ask me what is the matter
below stairs before she be ten minutes of time older, she is no born
woman, and my name is not Lilias Bradbourne.”

In pursuance of her plan, Mistress Lilias failed not to present herself
before her mistress with all the exterior of one who is possessed of
an important secret,--that is, she had the corners of her mouth turned
down, her eyes raised up, her lips pressed as fast together as if they
had been sewed up, to prevent her babbling, and an air of prim mystical
importance diffused over her whole person and demeanour, which seemed to
intimate, “I know something which I am resolved not to tell you!”

Lilias had rightly read her mistress's temper, who, wise and good as
she was, was yet a daughter of grandame Eve, and could not witness this
mysterious bearing on the part of her waiting-woman without longing to
ascertain the secret cause. For a space, Mrs. Lilias was obdurate to all
inquiries, sighed, turned her eyes up higher yet to heaven, hoped for
the best, but had nothing particular to communicate. All this, as was
most natural and proper, only stimulated the Lady's curiosity;
neither was her importunity to be parried with,--“Thank God, I am no
makebate--no tale-bearer,--thank God, I never envied any one's favour,
or was anxious to propale their misdemeanour-only, thank God, there has
been no bloodshed and murder in the house--that is all.”

“Bloodshed and murder!” exclaimed the Lady, “what does the quean
mean?--if you speak not plain out, you shall have something you will
scarce be thankful for.”

“Nay, my Lady,” answered Lilias, eager to disburden her mind, or, in,
Chaucer's phrase, to “unbuckle her mail,” “if you bid me speak out
the truth, you must not be moved with what might displease you--Roland
Graeme has dirked Adam Woodstock--that is all.”

“Good Heaven!” said the Lady, turning pale as ashes, “is the man slain?”

“No, madam,” replied Lilias, “but slain he would have been, if there
had not been ready help; but may be, it is your Ladyship's pleasure that
this young esquire shall poniard the servants, as well as switch and
baton them.”

“Go to, minion,” said the Lady, “you are saucy-tell the master of the
household to attend me instantly.”

Lilias hastened to seek out Mr. Wingate, and hurry him to his lady's
presence, speaking as a word in season to him on the way, “I have set
the stone a-trowling, look that you do not let it stand still.”

The steward, too prudential a person to commit himself otherwise,
answered by a sly look and a nod of intelligence, and presently after
stood in the presence of the Lady of Avenel, with a look of great
respect for his lady, partly real, partly affected, and an air of great
sagacity, which inferred no ordinary conceit of himself.

“How is this, Wingate,” said the Lady, “and what rule do you keep in the
castle, that the domestics of Sir Halbert Glendinning draw the dagger on
each other, as in a cavern of thieves and murderers?--is the wounded man
much hurt? and what--what hath become of the unhappy boy?”

“There is no one wounded as yet, madam,” replied he of the golden chain;
“it passes my poor skill to say how many may be wounded before Pasche,
[Footnote: Easter.] if some rule be not taken with this youth--not but
the youth is a fair youth,” he added, correcting himself, “and able at
his exercise; but somewhat too ready with the ends of his fingers, the
butt of his riding-switch, and the point of his dagger.”

“And whose fault is that,” said the Lady, “but yours, who should have
taught him better discipline, than to brawl or to draw his dagger.”

“If it please your Ladyship so to impose the blame on me,” answered the
steward, “it is my part, doubtless, to bear it--only I submit to your
consideration, that unless I nailed his weapon to the scabbard, I could
no more keep it still, than I could fix quicksilver, which defied even
the skill of Raymond Lullius.”

“Tell me not of Raymond Lullius,” said the Lady, losing patience, “but
send me the chaplain hither. You grow all of you too wise for me, during
your lord's long and repeated absences. I would to God his affairs would
permit him to remain at home and rule his own household, for it passes
my wit and skill!”

“God forbid, my Lady!” said the old domestic, “that you should sincerely
think what you are now pleased to say: your old servants might well
hope, that after so many years' duty, you would do their service more
justice than to distrust their gray hairs, because they cannot rule the
peevish humour of a green head, which the owner carries, it may be, a
brace of inches higher than becomes him.”

“Leave me,” said the Lady; “Sir Halbert's return must now be expected
daily, and he will look into these matters himself--leave me, I say,
Wingate, without saying more of it. I know you are honest, and I believe
the boy is petulant; and yet I think it is my favour which hath set all
of you against him.”

The steward bowed and retired, after having been silenced in a second
attempt to explain the motives on which he acted.

The chaplain arrived; but neither from him did the Lady receive much
comfort. On the contrary, she found him disposed, in plain terms, to
lay to the door of her indulgence all the disturbances which the fiery
temper of Roland Graeme had already occasioned, or might hereafter
occasion, in the family. “I would,” he said, “honoured Lady, that you
had deigned to be ruled by me in the outset of this matter, sith it is
easy to stem evil in the fountain, but hard to struggle against it in
the stream. You, honoured madam, (a word which I do not use according to
the vain forms of this world, but because I have ever loved and honoured
you as an honourable and elect lady,)--you, I say, madam, have been
pleased, contrary to my poor but earnest counsel, to raise this boy from
his station, into one approaching to your own.”

“What mean you, reverend sir?” said the Lady; “I have made this youth
a page--is there aught in my doing so that does not become my character
and quality?”

“I dispute not, madam,” said the pertinacious preacher, “your benevolent
purpose in taking charge of this youth, or your title to give him this
idle character of page, if such was your pleasure; though what the
education of a boy in the train of a female can tend to, save to ingraft
foppery and effeminacy on conceit and arrogance, it passes my knowledge
to discover. But I blame you more directly for having taken little care
to guard him against the perils of his condition, or to tame and humble
a spirit naturally haughty, overbearing, and impatient. You have brought
into your bower a lion's cub; delighted with the beauty of his fur, and
the grace of his gambols, you have bound him with no fetters befitting
the fierceness of his disposition. You have let him grow up as unawed as
if he had been still a tenant of the forest, and now you are surprised,
and call out for assistance, when he begins to ramp, rend, and tear,
according to his proper nature.”

“Mr. Warden,” said the Lady, considerably offended, “you are my
husband's ancient friend, and I believe your love sincere to him and
to his household. Yet let me say, that when I asked you for counsel,
I expected not this asperity of rebuke. If I have done wrong in loving
this poor orphan lad more than others of his class, I scarce think
the error merited such severe censure; and if stricter discipline were
required to keep his fiery temper in order, it ought, I think, to be
considered, that I am a woman, and that if I have erred in this matter,
it becomes a friend's part rather to aid than to rebuke me. I would
these evils were taken order with before my lord's return. He loves not
domestic discord or domestic brawls; and I would not willingly that he
thought such could arise from one whom I favoured--What do you counsel
me to do?”

“Dismiss this youth from your service, madam,” replied the preacher.

“You cannot bid me do so,” said the Lady; “you cannot, as a Christian
and a man of humanity, bid me turn away an unprotected creature against
whom my favour, my injudicious favour if you will, has reared up so many
enemies.”

“It is not necessary you should altogether abandon him, though you
dismiss him to another service, or to a calling better suiting his
station and character,” said the preacher; “elsewhere he maybe an useful
and profitable member of the commonweal--here he is but a makebate, and
a stumbling-block of offence. The youth has snatches of sense and of
intelligence, though he lacks industry. I will myself give him letters
commendatory to Olearius Schinderhausen, a learned professor at the
famous university of Leyden, where they lack an under-janitor--where,
besides gratis instruction, if God give him the grace to seek it, he
will enjoy five merks by the year, and the professor's cast-off suit,
which he disparts with biennially.”

“This will never do, good Mr. Warden,” said the Lady, scarce able to
suppress a smile; “we will think more at large upon this matter. In the
meanwhile, I trust to your remonstrances with this wild boy and with the
family, for restraining these violent and unseemly jealousies and bursts
of passion; and I entreat you to press on him and them their duty in
this respect towards God, and towards their master.”

“You shall be obeyed, madam,” said Warden. “On the next Thursday I
exhort the family, and will, with God's blessing, so wrestle with the
demon of wrath and violence, which hath entered into my little flock,
that I trust to hound the wolf out of the fold, as if he were chased
away with bandogs.”

This was the part of the conference from which Mr. Warden derived the
greatest pleasure. The pulpit was at that time the same powerful engine
for affecting popular feeling which the press has since become, and he
had been no unsuccessful preacher, as we have already seen. It followed
as a natural consequence, that he rather over-estimated the powers of
his own oratory, and, like some of his brethren about the period, was
glad of an opportunity to handle any matters of importance, whether
public or private, the discussion of which could be dragged into his
discourse. In that rude age the delicacy was unknown which prescribed
time and place to personal exhortations; and as the court-preacher often
addressed the King individually, and dictated to him the conduct he
ought to observe in matters of state, so the nobleman himself, or any of
his retainers, were, in the chapel of the feudal castle, often incensed
or appalled, as the case might be, by the discussion of their private
faults in the evening exercise, and by spiritual censures directed
against them, specifically, personally, and by name. The sermon, by
means of which Henry Warden purposed to restore concord and good order
to the Castle of Avenel, bore for text the well-known words, “_He who
striketh with the sword shall perish by the sword,_” and was a singular
mixture of good sense and powerful oratory with pedantry and bad taste.
He enlarged a good deal on the word striketh, which he assured his
hearers comprehended blows given with the point as well as with
the edge, and more generally, shooting with hand-gun, cross-bow, or
long-bow, thrusting with a lance, or doing any thing whatever by which
death might be occasioned to the adversary. In the same manner,
he proved satisfactorily, that the word sword comprehended all
descriptions, whether backsword or basket-hilt, cut-and-thrust or
rapier, falchion, or scimitar. “But if,” he continued, with still
greater animation, “the text includeth in its anathema those who strike
with any of those weapons which man hath devised for the exercise of his
open hostility, still more doth it comprehend such as from their form
and size are devised rather for the gratification of privy malice by
treachery, than for the destruction of an enemy prepared and standing
upon his defence. Such,” he proceeded, looking sternly at the place
where the page was seated on a cushion at the feet of his mistress, and
wearing in his crimson belt a gay dagger with a gilded hilt,--“such,
more especially, I hold to be those implements of death, which, in
our modern and fantastic times, are worn not only by thieves and
cut-throats, to whom they most properly belong, but even by those who
attend upon women, and wait in the chambers of honourable ladies. Yes,
my friends,--every species of this unhappy weapon, framed for all evil
and for no good, is comprehended under this deadly denunciation, whether
it be a stillet, which we have borrowed from the treacherous Italian, or
a dirk, which is borne by the savage Highlandman, or a whinger, which is
carried by our own Border thieves and cut-throats, or a dudgeon-dagger,
all are alike engines invented by the devil himself, for ready
implements of deadly wrath, sudden to execute, and difficult to be
parried. Even the common sword-and-buckler brawler despises the use of
such a treacherous and malignant instrument, which is therefore fit to
be used, not by men or soldiers, but by those who, trained under female
discipline, become themselves effeminate hermaphrodites, having female
spite and female cowardice added to the infirmities and evil passions of
their masculine nature.”

The effect which this oration produced upon the assembled congregation
of Avenel cannot very easily be described. The lady seemed at once
embarrassed and offended; the menials could hardly contain, under
an affectation of deep attention, the joy with which they heard the
chaplain launch his thunders at the head of the unpopular favourite, and
the weapon which they considered as a badge of affectation and finery.
Mrs. Lilias crested and drew up her head with all the deep-felt pride of
gratified resentment; while the steward, observing a strict neutrality
of aspect, fixed his eyes upon an old scutcheon on the opposite side
of the wall, which he seemed to examine with the utmost accuracy, more
willing, perhaps, to incur the censure of being inattentive to the
sermon, than that of seeming to listen with marked approbation to what
appeared so distasteful to his mistress.

The unfortunate subject of the harangue, whom nature had endowed with
passions which had hitherto found no effectual restraint, could not
disguise the resentment which he felt at being thus directly held up to
the scorn, as well as the censure, of the assembled inhabitants of the
little world in which he lived. His brow grew red, his lip grew pale, he
set his teeth, he clenched his hand, and then with mechanical readiness
grasped the weapon of which the clergyman had given so hideous a
character; and at length, as the preacher heightened the colouring of
his invective, he felt his rage become so ungovernable, that, fearful
of being hurried into some deed of desperate violence, he rose up,
traversed the chapel with hasty steps, and left the congregation.

The preacher was surprised into a sudden pause, while the fiery youth
shot across him like a flash of lightning, regarding him as he passed,
as if he had wished to dart from his eyes the same power of blighting
and of consuming. But no sooner had he crossed the chapel, and shut
with violence behind him the door of the vaulted entrance by which
it communicated with the castle, than the impropriety of his conduct
supplied Warden with one of those happier subjects for eloquence, of
which he knew how to take advantage for making a suitable impression on
his hearers. He paused for an instant, and then pronounced, in a slow
and solemn voice, the deep anathema: “He hath gone out from us because
he was not of us--the sick man hath been offended at the wholesome
bitter of the medicine--the wounded patient hath flinched from the
friendly knife of the surgeon--the sheep hath fled from the sheepfold
and delivered himself to the wolf, because he could not assume the
quiet and humble conduct demanded of us by the great Shepherd. Ah! my
brethren, beware of wrath--beware of pride--beware of the deadly and
destroying sin which so often shows itself to our frail eyes in
the garments of light! What is our earthly honour? Pride, and pride
only--What our earthly gifts and graces? Pride and vanity. Voyagers
speak of Indian men who deck themselves with shells, and anoint
themselves with pigments, and boast of their attire as we do of our
miserable carnal advantages--Pride could draw down the morning-star from
Heaven even to the verge of the pit--Pride and self-opinion kindled the
flaming sword which waves us off from Paradise--Pride made Adam mortal,
and a weary wanderer on the face of the earth, which he had else been at
this day the immortal lord of--Pride brought amongst us sin, and doubles
every sin it has brought. It is the outpost which the devil and the
flesh most stubbornly maintain against the assaults of grace; and until
it be subdued, and its barriers levelled with the very earth, there is
more hope of a fool than of the sinner. Rend, then, from your bosoms
this accursed shoot of the fatal apple; tear it up by the roots, though
it be twisted with the chords of your life. Profit by the example of the
miserable sinner that has passed from us, and embrace the means of
grace while it is called to-day 'ere your conscience is seared as with
a fire-brand, and your ears deafened like those of the adder, and
your heart hardened like the nether mill-stone. Up, then, and be
doing--wrestle and overcome; resist, and the enemy shall flee from
you--Watch and pray, lest ye fall into temptation, and let the stumbling
of others be your warning and your example. Above all, rely not on
yourselves, for such self-confidence is even the worst symptom of the
disorder itself. The Pharisee, perhaps, deemed himself humble while he
stooped in the Temple, and thanked God that he was not as other men, and
even as the publican. But while his knees touched the marble pavement,
his head was as high as the topmost pinnacle of the Temple. Do not,
therefore, deceive yourselves, and offer false coin, where the purest
you can present is but as dross--think not that such--will pass the
assay of Omnipotent Wisdom. Yet shrink not from the task, because, as
is my bounden duty, I do not disguise from you its difficulties.
Self-searching can do much--Meditation can do much--Grace can do all.”

And he concluded with a touching and animating exhortation to his
hearers to seek divine grace, which is perfected in human wakness.

The audience did not listen to this address without being considerably
affected; though it might be doubted whether the feelings of triumph,
excited by the disgraceful retreat of the favourite page, did not
greatly qualify in the minds of many the exhortations of the preacher
to charity and to humility. And, in fact, the expression of their
countenances much resembled the satisfied triumphant air of a set of
children, who, having just seen a companion punished for a fault in
which they had no share, con their task with double glee, both because
they themselves are out of the scrape, and because the culprit is in it.

With very different feelings did the Lady of Avenel seek her own
apartment. She felt angry at Warden having made a domestic matter,
in which she took a personal interest, the subject of such public
discussion. But this she knew the good man claimed as a branch of his
Christian liberty as a preacher, and also that it was vindicated by the
universal custom of his brethren. But the self-willed conduct of her
protegé afforded her yet deeper concern. That he had broken through in
so remarkable a degree, not only the respect due to her presence, but
that which was paid to religious admonition in those days with such
peculiar reverence, argued a spirit as untameable as his enemies had
represented him to possess. And yet so far as he had been under her own
eye, she had seen no more of that fiery spirit than appeared to her to
become his years and his vivacity. This opinion might be founded in
some degree on partiality; in some degree, too, it might be owing to the
kindness and indulgence which she had always extended to him; but still
she thought it impossible that she could be totally mistaken in the
estimate she had formed of his character. The extreme of violence is
scarce consistent with a course of continued hypocrisy, (although Lilias
charitably hinted, that in some instances they were happily united,) and
there fore she could not exactly trust the report of others against her
own experience and observation. The thoughts of this orphan boy clung
to her heartstrings with a fondness for which she herself was unable to
account. He seemed to have been sent to her by Heaven, to fill up those
intervals of languor and vacuity which deprived her of much enjoyment.
Perhaps he was not less dear to her, because she well saw that he was
a favourite with no one else, and because she felt, that to give him up
was to afford the judgment of her husband and others a triumph over
her own; a circumstance not quite indifferent to the best of spouses of
either sex.

In short, the Lady of Avenel formed the internal resolution, that she
would not desert her page while her page could be rationally protected;
and, with a view of ascertaining how far this might be done, she caused
him to be summoned to her presence.




Chapter the Fifth.


  --In the wild storm,
  The seaman hews his mast down, and the merchant
  Heaves to the billows wares he once deem'd precious;
  So prince and peer, 'mid popular contentions,
  Cast off their favourites.
                                  OLD PLAY.

It was some time ere Roland Graeme appeared. The messenger (his old
friend Lilias) had at first attempted to open the door of his little
apartment with the charitable purpose, doubtless, of enjoying the
confusion, and marking the demeanour of the culprit. But an oblong bit
of iron, ycleped a bolt, was passed across the door on the inside, and
prevented her benign intentions. Lilias knocked and called at intervals.
“Roland--Roland Graeme--_Master_ Roland Graeme” (an emphasis on the word
Master,) “will you be pleased to undo the door?--What ails you?--are
you at your prayers in private, to complete the devotion which you left
unfinished in public?--Surely we must have a screened seat for you in
the chapel, that your gentility may be free from the eyes of common
folks!” Still no whisper was heard in reply. “Well, master Roland,” said
the waiting-maid, “I must tell my mistress, that if she would have an
answer, she must either come herself, or send those on errand to you who
can beat the door down.”

“What says your Lady?” answered the page from within.

“Marry, open the door, and you shall hear,” answered the waiting-maid.
“I trow it becomes my Lady's message to be listened to face to face; and
I will not for your idle pleasure, whistle it through a key-hole.”

“Your mistress's name,” said the page, opening the door, “is too fair a
cover for your impertinence--What says my Lady?”

“That you will be pleased to come to her directly, in the
withdrawing-room,” answered Lilias. “I presume she has some directions
for you concerning the forms to be observed in leaving chapel in
future.”

“Say to my Lady, that I will directly wait on her,” answered the page;
and returning into his apartment, he once more locked the door in the
face of the waiting-maid.

“Rare courtesy!” muttered Lilias; and, returning to her mistress,
acquainted her that Roland Graeme would wait on her when it suited his
convenience.

“What, is that his addition, or your own phrase, Lilias?” said the Lady,
coolly.

“Nay, madam,” replied the attendant, not directly answering the
question, “he looked as if he could have said much more impertinent
things than that, if I had been willing to hear them.--But here he comes
to answer for himself.”

Roland Graeme entered the apartment with a loftier mien, and somewhat a
higher colour than his wont; there was embarrassment in his manner, but
it was neither that of fear nor of penitence.

“Young man,” said the Lady, “what trow you I am to think of your conduct
this day?”

“If it has offended you, madam, I am deeply grieved,” replied the youth.

“To have offended me alone,” replied the Lady, “were but little--You
have been guilty of conduct which will highly offend your master--of
violence to your fellow-servants, and of disrespect to God himself, in
the person of his ambassador.”

“Permit me again to reply,” said the page, “that if I have offended
my only mistress, friend, and benefactress, it includes the sum of my
guilt, and deserves the sum of my penitence--Sir Halbert Glendinning
calls me not servant, nor do I call him master--he is not entitled to
blame me for chastising an insolent groom--nor do I fear the wrath
of Heaven for treating with scorn the unauthorized interference of a
meddling preacher.”

The Lady of Avenel had before this seen symptoms in her favourite of
boyish petulance, and of impatience of censure or reproof. But his
present demeanour was of a graver and more determined character, and she
was for a moment at a loss how she should treat the youth, who seemed to
have at once assumed the character not only of a man, but of a bold and
determined one. She paused an instant, and then assuming the dignity
which was natural to her, she said, “Is it to me, Roland, that you hold
this language? Is it for the purpose of making me repent the favour I
have shown you, that you declare yourself independent both of an earthly
and a Heavenly master? Have you forgotten what you were, and to what the
loss of my protection would speedily again reduce you?”

“Lady,” said the page, “I have forgot nothing, I remember but too much.
I know, that but for you, I should have perished in yon blue waves,”
 pointing, as he spoke, to the lake, which was seen through the
window, agitated by the western wind. “Your goodness has gone farther,
madam--you have protected me against the malice of others, and against
my own folly. You are free, if you are willing, to abandon the orphan
you have reared. You have left nothing undone by him, and he complains
of nothing. And yet, Lady, do not think I have been ungrateful--I have
endured something on my part, which I would have borne for the sake of
no one but my benefactress.”

“For my sake!” said the Lady; “and what is it that I can have subjected
you to endure, which can be remembered with other feelings than those of
thanks and gratitude?”

“You are too just, madam, to require me to be thankful for the cold
neglect with which your husband has uniformly treated me--neglect not
unmingled with fixed aversion. You are too just, madam, to require me
to be grateful for the constant and unceasing marks of scorn and
malevolence with which I have been treated by others, or for such a
homily as that with which your reverend chaplain has, at my expense,
this very day regaled the assembled household.”

“Heard mortal ears the like of this!” said the waiting-maid, with her
hands expanded and her eyes turned up to heaven; “he speaks as if he
were son of an earl, or of a belted knight the least penny!”

The page glanced on her a look of supreme contempt, but vouchsafed
no other answer. His mistress, who began to feel herself seriously
offended, and yet sorry for the youth's folly, took up the same tone.

“Indeed, Roland, you forget yourself so strangely,” said she, “that you
will tempt me to take serious measures to lower you in your own opinion
by reducing you to your proper station in society.”

“And that,” added Lilias, “would be best done by turning him out the
same beggar's brat that your ladyship took him in.”

“Lilias speaks too rudely,” continued the Lady, “but she has spoken the
truth, young man; nor do I think I ought to spare that pride which
hath so completely turned your head. You have been tricked up with fine
garments, and treated like the son of a gentleman, until you have forgot
the fountain of your churlish blood.”

“Craving your pardon, most honourable madam, Lilias hath _not_ spoken
truth, nor does your ladyship know aught of my descent, which should
entitle you to treat it with such decided scorn. I am no beggar's
brat--my grandmother begged from no one, here nor elsewhere--she would
have perished sooner on the bare moor. We were harried out and driven
from our home--a chance which has happed elsewhere, and to others.
Avenel Castle, with its lake and its towers, was not at all times able
to protect its inhabitants from want and desolation.”

“Hear but his assurance!” said Lilias, “he upbraids my Lady with the
distresses of her family!”

“It had indeed been a theme more gratefully spared,” said the Lady,
affected nevertheless with the allusion.

“It was necessary, madam, for my vindication,” said the page, “or I
had not even hinted at a word that might give you pain. But believe,
honoured Lady, I am of no churl's blood. My proper descent I know not;
but my only relation has said, and my heart has echoed it back and
attested the truth, that I am sprung of gentle blood, and deserve gentle
usage.”

“And upon an assurance so vague as this,” said the Lady, “do you propose
to expect all the regard, all the privileges, befitting high rank and
distinguished birth, and become a contender for concessions which are
only due to the noble? Go to, sir, know yourself, or the master of
the household shall make you know you are liable to the scourge as a
malapert boy. You have tasted too little the discipline fit for your age
and station.”

“The master of the household shall taste of my dagger, ere I taste of
his discipline,” said the page, giving way to his restrained passion.
“Lady, I have been too long the vassal of a pantoufle, and the slave
of a silver whistle. You must henceforth find some other to answer your
call; and let him be of birth and spirit mean enough to brook the scorn
of your menials, and to call a church vassal his master.”

“I have deserved this insult,” said the Lady, colouring deeply, “for
so long enduring and fostering your petulance. Begone, sir. Leave this
castle to-night--I will send you the means of subsistence till you find
some honest mode of support, though I fear your imaginary grandeur will
be above all others, save those of rapine and violence. Begone, sir, and
see my face no more.”

The page threw himself at her feet in an agony of sorrow. “My dear
and honoured mistress,” he said, but was unable to bring out another
syllable.

“Arise, sir,” said the Lady, “and let go my mantle--hypocrisy is a poor
cloak for ingratitude.”

“I am incapable of either, madam,” said the page, springing up with the
hasty start of passion which belonged to his rapid and impetuous temper.
“Think not I meant to implore permission to reside here; it has been
long my determination to leave Avenel, and I will never forgive myself
for having permitted you to say the word begone, ere I said, 'I leave
you.' I did but kneel to ask your forgiveness for an ill-considered word
used in the height of displeasure, but which ill became my mouth,
as addressed to you. Other grace I asked not--you have done much for
me--but I repeat, that you better know what you yourself have done, than
what I have suffered.”

“Roland,” said the Lady, somewhat appeased, and relenting towards her
favourite, “you had me to appeal to when you were aggrieved. You were
neither called upon to suffer wrong, nor entitled to resent it, when you
were under my protection.”

“And what,” said the youth, “if I sustained wrong from those you loved
and favoured, was I to disturb your peace with idle tale-bearings and
eternal complaints? No, madam; I have borne my own burden in silence,
and without disturbing you with murmurs; and the respect with which
you accuse me of wanting, furnishes the only reason why I have neither
appealed to you, nor taken vengeance at my own hand in a manner far more
effectual. It is well, however, that we part. I was not born to be a
stipendiary, favoured by his mistress, until ruined by the calumnies
of others. May Heaven multiply its choicest blessings on your honoured
head; and, for your sake, upon all that are dear to you!”

He was about to leave the apartment, when the Lady called upon him to
return. He stood still, while she thus addressed him: “It was not my
intention, nor would it be just, even in the height of my displeasure,
to dismiss you without the means of support; take this purse of gold.”

“Forgive me, Lady,” said the boy, “and let me go hence with the
consciousness that I have not been degraded to the point of accepting
alms. If my poor services can be placed against the expense of my
apparel and my maintenance, I only remain debtor to you for my life, and
that alone is a debt which I can never repay; put up then that purse,
and only say, instead, that you do not part from me in anger.”

“No, not in anger,” said the Lady, “in sorrow rather for your
wilfulness; but take the gold, you cannot but need it.”

“May God evermore bless you for the kind tone and the kind word! but the
gold I cannot take. I am able of body, and do not lack friends so wholly
as you may think; for the time may come that I may yet show myself more
thankful than by mere words.” He threw himself on his knees, kissed the
hand which she did not withdraw, and then, hastily left the apartment.

Lilias, for a moment or two, kept her eye fixed on her mistress, who
looked so unusually pale, that she seemed about to faint; but the Lady
instantly recovered herself, and declining the assistance which her
attendant offered her, walked to her own apartment.




Chapter the Sixth.


  Thou hast each secret of the household, Francis.
  I dare be sworn thou hast been in the buttery,
  Steeping thy curious humour in fat ale,
  And in thy butler's tattle--ay, or chatting
  With the glib waiting-woman o'er her comfits--
  These bear the key to each domestic mystery.
                                  OLD PLAY.

Upon the morrow succeeding the scene we have described, the disgraced
favourite left the castle; and at breakfast-time the cautious old
steward and Mrs. Lilias sat in the apartment of the latter personage,
holding grave converse on the important event of the day, sweetened by a
small treat of comfits, to which the providence of Mr. Wingate had added
a little flask of racy canary.

“He is gone at last,” said the abigail, sipping her glass; “and here is
to his good journey.”

“Amen,” answered the steward, gravely; “I wish the poor deserted lad no
ill.”

“And he is gone like a wild-duck, as he came,” continued Mrs. Lilias;
“no lowering of drawbridges, or pacing along causeways, for him. My
master has pushed off in the boat which they call the little Herod,
(more shame to them for giving the name of a Christian to wood and
iron,) and has rowed himself by himself to the farther side of the loch,
and off and away with himself, and left all his finery strewed about his
room. I wonder who is to clean his trumpery out after him--though the
things are worth lifting, too.”

“Doubtless, Mistress Lilias,” answered the master of the household,
“in the which case, I am free to think, they will not long cumber the
floor.”

“And now tell me, Master Wingate,” continued the damsel, “do not the
very cockles of your heart rejoice at the house being rid of this
upstart whelp, that flung us all into shadow?”

“Why, Mistress Lilias,” replied Wingate, “as to rejoicing--those who
have lived as long in great families as has been my lot, will be in no
hurry to rejoice at any thing. And for Roland Graeme, though he may be a
good riddance in the main, yet what says the very sooth proverb, 'Seldom
comes a better.'”

“Seldom comes a better, indeed!” echoed Mrs. Lilias. “I say, never can
come a worse, or one half so bad. He might have been the ruin of our
poor dear mistress,” (here she used her kerchief,) “body and soul, and
estate too; for she spent more coin on his apparel than on any four
servants about the house.”

“Mistress Lilias,” said the sage steward, “I do opine that our mistress
requireth not this pity at your hands, being in all respects competent
to take care of her own body, soul, and estate into the bargain.”

“You would not mayhap have said so,” answered the waiting-woman, “had
you seen how like Lot's wife she looked when young master took his
leave. My mistress is a good lady, and a virtuous, and a well-doing
lady, and a well-spoken of--but I would not Sir Halbert had seen her
last evening for two and a plack.”

“Oh, foy! foy! foy!” reiterated the steward; “servants should hear and
see, and say nothing. Besides that, my lady is utterly devoted to Sir
Halbert, as well she may, being, as he is, the most renowned knight in
these parts.”

“Well, well,” said the abigail, “I mean no more harm; but they that seek
least renown abroad, are most apt to find quiet at home, that's all; and
my Lady's lonesome situation is to be considered, that made her fain to
take up with the first beggar's brat that a dog brought her out of the
loch.”

“And, therefore,” said the steward, “I say, rejoice not too much, or too
hastily, Mistress Lilias; for if your Lady wished a favourite to pass
away the time, depend upon it, the time will not pass lighter now that
he is gone. So she will have another favourite to choose for herself;
and be assured, if she wishes such a toy, she will not lack one.”

“And where should she choose one, but among her own tried and faithful
servants,” said Mrs. Lilias, “who have broken her bread, and drunk her
drink, for so many years? I have known many a lady as high as she is,
that never thought either of a friend or favourite beyond their own
waiting-woman--always having a proper respect, at the same time, for
their old and faithful master of the household, Master Wingate.”

“Truly, Mistress Lilias,” replied the steward, “I do partly see the mark
at which you shoot, but I doubt your bolt will fall short. Matters
being with our Lady as it likes you to suppose, it will neither be your
crimped pinners, Mrs. Lilias, (speaking of them with due respect,) nor
my silver hair, or golden chain, that will fill up the void which Roland
Graeme must needs leave in our Lady's leisure. There will be a learned
young divine with some new doctrine--a learned leech with some new
drug--a bold cavalier, who will not be refused the favour of wearing her
colours at a running at the ring--a cunning harper that could harp the
heart out of woman's breast, as they say Signer David Rizzio did to
our poor Queen;--these are the sort of folk who supply the loss of
a well-favoured favourite, and not an old steward, or a middle-aged
waiting-woman.”

“Well,” replied Lilias, “you have experience, Master Wingate, and truly
I would my master would leave off his picking hither and thither,
and look better after the affairs of his household. There will be a
papestrie among us next, for what should I see among master's clothes
but a string of gold beads! I promise you, _aves_ and _credos_ both!--I
seized on them like a falcon.”

“I doubt it not, I doubt it not,” said the steward, sagaciously nodding
his head; “I have often noticed that the boy had strange observances
which savoured of popery, and that he was very jealous to conceal them.
But you will find the Catholic under the Presbyterian cloak as often as
the knave under the Friar's hood--what then? we are all mortal--Right
proper beads they are,” he added, looking attentively at them, “and may
weigh four ounces of fine gold.”

“And I will have them melted down presently,” she said, “before they be
the misguiding of some poor blinded soul.”

“Very cautious, indeed, Mistress Lilias,” said the steward, nodding his
head in assent.

“I will have them made,” said Mrs. Lilias, “into a pair of shoe-buckles;
I would not wear the Pope's trinkets, or whatever has once borne the
shape of them, one inch above my instep, were they diamonds instead
of gold.--But this is what has come of Father Ambrose coming about the
castle, as demure as a cat that is about to steal cream.”

“Father Ambrose is our master's brother,” said the steward gravely.

“Very true, Master Wingate,” answered the Dame; “but is that a good
reason why he should pervert the king's liege subjects to papistrie?”

“Heaven forbid, Mistress Lilias,” answered the sententious major-domo;
“but yet there are worse folk than the Papists.”

“I wonder where they are to be found,” said the waiting-woman, with some
asperity; “but I believe, Master Wingate, if one were to speak to you
about the devil himself, you would say there were worse people than
Satan.”

“Assuredly I might say so,” replied the steward, “supposing that I saw
Satan standing at my elbow.”

The waiting-woman started, and having exclaimed, “God bless us!” added,
“I wonder, Master Wingate, you can take pleasure in frightening one
thus.”

“Nay, Mistress Lilias, I had no such purpose,” was the reply; “but look
you here--the Papists are but put down for the present, but who knows
how long this word _present_ will last? There are two great Popish earls
in the north of England, that abominate the very word reformation; I
mean the Northumberland and Westmoreland Earls, men of power enough to
shake any throne in Christendom. Then, though our Scottish king be,
God bless him, a true Protestant, yet he is but a boy; and here is his
mother that was our queen--I trust there is no harm to say, God bless
her too--and she is a Catholic; and many begin to think she has had but
hard measure, such as the Hamiltons in the west, and some of our Border
clans here, and the Gordons in the north, who are all wishing to see a
new world; and if such a new world should chance to come up, it is like
that the Queen will take back her own crown, and that the mass and the
cross will come up, and then down go pulpits, Geneva-gowns, and black
silk skull-caps.”

“And have you, Master Jasper Wingate, who have heard the word, and
listened unto pure and precious Mr. Henry Warden, have you, I say, the
patience to speak, or but to think, of popery coming down on us like a
storm, or of the woman Mary again making the royal seat of Scotland a
throne of abomination? No marvel that you are so civil to the cowled
monk, Father Ambrose, when he comes hither with his downcast eyes that
he never raises to my Lady's face, and with his low sweet-toned voice,
and his benedicites, and his benisons; and who so ready to take them
kindly as Master Wingate?”

“Mistress Lilias,” replied the butler, with an air which was intended
to close the debate, “there are reasons for all things. If I received
Father Ambrose debonairly, and suffered him to steal a word now and
then with this same Roland Graeme, it was not that I cared a brass
bodle for his benison or malison either, but only because I respected
my master's blood. And who can answer, if Mary come in again, whether he
may not be as stout a tree to lean to as ever his brother hath proved
to us? For down goes the Earl of Murray when the Queen comes by her
own again; and good is his luck if he can keep the head on his own
shoulders. And down goes our Knight, with the Earl, his patron; and who
so like to mount into his empty saddle as this same Father Ambrose? The
Pope of Rome can so soon dispense with his vows, and then we should have
Sir Edward the soldier, instead of Ambrose the priest.”

Anger and astonishment kept Mrs. Lilias silent,--while her old friend,
in his self-complacent manner, was making known to her his political
speculations. At length her resentment found utterance in words of
great ire and scorn. “What, Master Wingate! have you eaten my mistress's
bread, to say nothing of my master's, so many years, that you could live
to think of her being dispossessed of her own Castle of Avenel, by a
wretched monk, who is not a drop's blood to her in the way of relation?
I, that am but a woman, would try first whether my rock or his cowl was
the better metal. Shame on you, Master Wingate! I If I had not held
you as so old an acquaintance, this should have gone to my Lady's ears
though I had been called pickthank and tale-pyet for my pains, as when I
told of Roland Graeme shooting the wild swan.”

Master Wingate was somewhat dismayed at perceiving, that the details
which he had given of his far-sighted political views had produced on
his hearer rather suspicion of his fidelity, than admiration of his
wisdom, and endeavoured, as hastily as possible, to apologize and to
explain, although internally extremely offended at the unreasonable
view, as he deemed it, which it had pleased Mistress Lilias
Bradbourne to take of his expressions; and mentally convinced that her
disapprobation of his sentiments arose solely out of the consideration,
that though Father Ambrose, supposing him to become the master of the
castle, would certainly require the services of a steward, yet those
of a waiting-woman would, in the supposed circumstances, be altogether
superfluous.

After his explanation had been received as explanations usually are, the
two friends separated; Lilias to attend the silver whistle which called
her to her mistress's chamber, and the sapient major-domo to the duties
of his own department. They parted with less than their usual degree of
reverence and regard; for the steward felt that his worldly wisdom was
rebuked by the more disinterested attachment of the waiting-woman, and
Mistress Lilias Bradbourne was compelled to consider her old friend as
something little better than a time-server.




Chapter the Seventh.


  When I hae a saxpence under my thumb,
  Then I get credit in ilka town;
  But when I am puir they bid me gae by--
  Oh, poverty parts good company!
                         OLD SONG.

While the departure of the page afforded subject for the conversation
which we have detailed in our last chapter, the late favourite was far
advanced on his solitary journey, without well knowing what was its
object, or what was likely to be its end. He had rowed the skiff in
which he left the castle, to the side of the lake most distant from the
village, with the desire of escaping from the notice of the inhabitants.
His pride whispered, that he would be in his discarded state, only the
subject of their wonder and compassion; and his generosity told him,
that any mark of sympathy which his situation should excite, might be
unfavourably reported at the castle. A trifling incident convinced him
he had little to fear for his friends on the latter score. He was met by
a young man some years older than himself, who had on former occasions
been but too happy to be permitted to share in his sports in the
subordinate character of his assistant. Ralph Fisher approached to greet
him, with all the alacrity of an humble friend.

“What, Master Roland, abroad on this side, and without either hawk or
hound?”

“Hawk or hound,” said Roland, “I will never perhaps hollo to again. I
have been dismissed--that is, I have left the castle.”

Ralph was surprised. “What! you are to pass into the Knight's service,
and take the black jack and the lance?”

“Indeed,” replied Roland Graeme, “I am not--I am now leaving the service
of Avenel for ever.”

“And whither are you going, then?” said the young peasant.

“Nay, that is a question which it craves time to answer--I have that
matter to determine yet,” replied the disgraced favourite.

“Nay, nay,” said Ralph, “I warrant you it is the same to you which way
you go--my Lady would not dismiss you till she had put some lining into
the pouches of your doublet.”

“Sordid slave!” said Roland Graeme, “dost thou think I would have
accepted a boon from one who was giving me over a prey to detraction
and to ruin, at the instigation of a canting priest and a meddling
serving-woman? The bread that I had bought with such an alms would have
choked me at the first mouthful.”

Ralph looked at his quondam friend with an air of wonder not
unmixed with contempt. “Well,” he said, at length, “no occasion for
passion--each man knows his own stomach best--but, were I on a black
moor at this time of day, not knowing whither I was going, I should
be glad to have a broad piece or two in my pouch, come by them as I
could.--But perhaps you will go with me to my father's--that is, for a
night, for to-morrow we expect my uncle Menelaus and all his folk; but,
as I said, for one night----”

The cold-blooded limitation of the offered shelter to one night only,
and that tendered most unwillingly, offended the pride of the discarded
favourite.

“I would rather sleep on the fresh heather, as I have done many a night
on less occasion,” said Roland Graeme, “than in the smoky garret of your
father, that smells of peat smoke and usquebaugh like a Highlander's
plaid.”

“You may choose, my master, if you are so nice,” replied Ralph Fisher;
“you may be glad to smell a peat-fire, and usquebaugh too, if you
journey long in the fashion you propose. You might have said God-a-mercy
for your proffer, though--it is not every one that will put themselves
in the way of ill-will by harbouring a discarded serving-man.”

“Ralph,” said Roland Graeme, “I would pray you to remember that I have
switched you before now, and this is the same riding-wand which you have
tasted.”

Ralph, who was a thickset clownish figure, arrived at his full strength,
and conscious of the most complete personal superiority, laughed
contemptuously at the threats of the slight-made stripling.

“It may be the same wand,” he said, “but not the same hand; and that is
as good rhyme as if it were in a ballad. Look you, my Lady's page
that was, when your switch was up, it was no fear of you, but of
your betters, that kept mine down--and I wot not what hinders me from
clearing old scores with this hazel rung, and showing you it was your
Lady's livery-coat which I spared, and not your flesh and blood, Master
Roland.”

In the midst of his rage, Roland Graeme was just wise enough to see,
that by continuing this altercation, he would subject himself to very
rude treatment from the boor, who was so much older and stronger than
himself; and while his antagonist, with a sort of jeering laugh of
defiance, seemed to provoke the contest, he felt the full bitterness of
his own degraded condition, and burst into a passion of tears, which he
in vain endeavoured to conceal with both his hands.

Even the rough churl was moved with the distress of his quondam
companion.

“Nay, Master Roland,” he said, “I did but as 'twere jest with thee--I
would not harm thee, man, were it but for old acquaintance sake. But
ever look to a man's inches ere you talk of switching--why, thine arm,
man, is but like a spindle compared to mine.--But hark, I hear old Adam
Woodcock hollowing to his hawk--Come along, man, we will have a merry
afternoon, and go jollily to my father's in spite of the peat-smoke and
usquebaugh to boot. Maybe we may put you into some honest way of winning
your bread, though it's hard to come by in these broken times.”

The unfortunate page made no answer, nor did he withdraw his hands from
his face, and Fisher continued in what he imagined a suitable tone of
comfort.

“Why, man, when you were my Lady's minion, men held you proud, and some
thought you a Papist, and I wot not what; and so, now that you have no
one to bear you out, you must be companionable and hearty, and wait on
the minister's examinations, and put these things out of folk's head;
and if he says you are in fault, you must jouk your head to the stream;
and if a gentleman, or a gentleman's gentleman, give you a rough word,
or a light blow, you must only say, thank you for dusting my doublet, or
the like, as I have done by you.--But hark to Woodcock's whistle again.
Come, and I will teach you all the trick on't as we go on.”

“I thank you,” said Roland Graeme, endeavouring to assume an air of
indifference and of superiority; “but I have another path before me, and
were it otherwise, I could not tread in yours.”

“Very true, Master Roland,” replied the clown; “and every man knows his
own matters best, and so I will not keep you from the path, as you say.
Give us a grip of your hand, man, for auld lang syne.--What! not clap
palms ere we part?--well, so be it--a wilful man will have his way, and
so farewell, and the blessing of the morning to you.”

“Good-morrow--good-morrow,” said Roland, hastily; and the clown walked
lightly off, whistling as he went, and glad, apparently, to be rid of an
acquaintance, whose claims might be troublesome, and who had no longer
the means to be serviceable to him.

Roland Graeme compelled himself to walk on while they were within sight
of each other that his former intimate might not augur any vacillation
of purpose, or uncertainty of object, from his remaining on the same
spot; but the effort was a painful one. He seemed stunned, as it were,
and giddy; the earth on which he stood felt as if unsound, and quaking
under his feet like the surface of a bog; and he had once or twice
nearly fallen, though the path he trode was of firm greensward. He kept
resolutely moving forward, in spite of the internal agitation to which
these symptoms belonged, until the distant form of his acquaintance
disappeared behind the slope of a hill, when his heart failed at once;
and, sitting down on the turf, remote from human ken, he gave way to
the natural expressions of wounded pride, grief, and fear, and wept with
unrestrained profusion and unqualified bitterness.

When the first violent paroxysm of his feelings had subsided, the
deserted and friendless youth felt that mental relief which usually
follows such discharges of sorrow. The tears continued to chase each
other down his cheeks, but they were no longer accompanied by the same
sense of desolation; an afflicting yet milder sentiment was awakened
in his mind, by the recollection of his benefactress, of the unwearied
kindness which had attached her to him, in spite of many acts of
provoking petulance, now recollected as offences of a deep dye, which
had protected him against the machinations of others, as well as against
the consequences of his own folly, and would have continued to do so,
had not the excess of his presumption compelled her to withdraw her
protection.

“Whatever indignity I have borne,” he said, “has been the just reward of
my own ingratitude. And have I done well to accept the hospitality, the
more than maternal kindness, of my protectress, yet to detain from her
the knowledge of my religion?--but she shall know that a Catholic has
as much gratitude as a Puritan--that I have been thoughtless, but not
wicked--that in my wildest moments I have loved, respected, and honoured
her--and that the orphan boy might indeed be heedless, but was never
ungrateful!”

He turned, as these thoughts passed through his mind, and began hastily
to retread his footsteps towards the castle. But he checked the first
eagerness of his repentant haste, when he reflected on the scorn and
contempt with which the family were likely to see the return of
the fugitive, humbled, as they must necessarily suppose him, into a
supplicant, who requested pardon for his fault, and permission to return
to his service. He slackened his pace, but he stood not still.

“I care not,” he resolutely determined; “let them wink, point, nod,
sneer, speak of the conceit which is humbled, of the pride which has had
a fall--I care not; it is a penance due to my folly, and I will endure
it with patience. But if she also, my benefactress, if she also should
think me sordid and weak-spirited enough to beg, not for her pardon
alone, but for a renewal of the advantages which I derived from her
favour--_her_ suspicion of my meanness I cannot--I will not brook.”

He stood still, and his pride rallying with constitutional obstinacy
against his more just feeling, urged that he would incur the scorn of
the Lady of Avenel, rather than obtain her favour, by following the
course which the first ardour of his repentant feelings had dictated to
him.

“If I had but some plausible pretext,” he thought, “some ostensible
reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came not
as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go thither--but
as I am, I cannot--my heart would leap from its place and burst.”

As these thoughts swept through his mind, something passed in the air
so near him as to dazzle his eyes, and almost to brush the plume in his
cap. He looked up--it was the favourite falcon of Sir Halbert, which,
flying around his head, seemed to claim his attention, as that of a
well-known friend. Roland extended his arm, and gave the accustomed
whoop, and the falcon instantly settled on his wrist, and began to prune
itself, glancing at the youth from time to time an acute and brilliant
beam of its hazel eye, which seemed to ask why he caressed it not with
his usual fondness.

“Ah, Diamond!” he said, as if the bird understood him, “thou and I must
be strangers henceforward. Many a gallant stoop have I seen thee make,
and many a brave heron strike down; but that is all gone and over, and
there is no hawking more for me!”

“And why not, Master Roland,” said Adam Woodcock the falconer, who came
at that instant from behind a few alder bushes which had concealed him
from view, “why should there be no more hawking for you? Why, man, what
were our life without our sports?--thou know'st the jolly old song--

  “And rather would Allan in dungeon lie,
  Than live at large where the falcon cannot fly;
  And Allan would rather lie in Sexton's pound,
  Than live where he followed not the merry hawk and hound.”

The voice of the falconer was hearty and friendly, and the tone in which
he half-sung half-recited his rude ballad, implied honest frankness
and cordiality. But remembrance of their quarrel, and its consequences,
embarrassed Roland, and prevented his reply. The falconer saw his
hesitation, and guessed the cause.

“What now,” said he, “Master Roland? do you, who are half an Englishman,
think that I, who am a whole one, would keep up anger against you,
and you in distress? That were like some of the Scots, (my master's
reverence always excepted,) who can be fair and false, and wait their
time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves, and touch pot and
flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and, after all, when
time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of the dagger. Canny
Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why, man, an you had hit me
a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken it from you, than a rough
word from another; for you have a good notion of falconry, though you
stand up for washing the meat for the eyases. So give us your hand, man,
and bear no malice.”

Roland, though he felt his proud blood rebel at the familiarity of
honest Adam's address, could not resist its downright frankness.
Covering his face with the one hand, he held out the other to the
falconer, and returned with readiness his friendly grasp.

“Why, this is hearty now,” said Woodcock; “I always said you had a kind
heart, though you have a spice of the devil in your disposition, that is
certain. I came this way with the falcon on purpose to find you, and yon
half-bred lubbard told me which way you took flight. You ever thought
too much of that kestril-kite, Master Roland, and he knows nought of
sport after all, but what he caught from you. I saw how it had been
betwixt you, and I sent him out of my company with a wanion--I would
rather have a rifler on my perch than a false knave at my elbow--and
now, Master Roland, tell me what way wing ye?”

“That is as God pleases,” replied the page, with a sigh which he could
not suppress.

“Nay, man, never droop a feather for being cast off,” said the falconer;
“who knows but you may soar the better and fairer flight for all this
yet?--Look at Diamond there, 'tis a noble bird, and shows gallantly
with his hood, and bells, and jesses; but there is many a wild falcon
in Norway that would not change properties with him--And that is what
I would say of you. You are no longer my Lady's page, and you will
not clothe so fair, or feed so well, or sleep so soft, or show so
gallant--What of all that? if you are not her page, you are your own
man, and may go where you will, without minding whoop or whistle. The
worst is the loss of the sport, but who knows what you may come to? They
say that Sir Halbert himself, I speak with reverence, was once glad to
be the Abbot's forester, and now he has hounds and hawks of his own, and
Adam Woodcock for a falconer to the boot.”

“You are right, and say well, Adam,” answered the youth, the blood
mantling in his cheeks, “the falcon will soar higher without his bells
than with them, though the bells be made of silver.”

“That is cheerily spoken,” replied the falconer; “and whither now?”

“I thought of going to the Abbey of Kennaquhair,” answered Roland
Graeme, “to ask the counsel of Father Ambrose.”

“And joy go with you,” said the falconer, “though it is likely you may
find the old monks in some sorrow; they say the commons are threatening
to turn them out of their cells, and make a devil's mass of it in the
old church, thinking they have forborne that sport too long; and troth I
am clear of the same opinion.”

“Then will Father Ambrose be the better of having a friend beside him!”
 said the page, manfully.

“Ay, but, my young fearnought,” replied the falconer, “the friend will
scarce be the better of being beside Father Ambrose--he may come by the
redder's lick, and that is ever the worst of the battle.”

“I care not for that,” said the page, “the dread of a lick should not
hold me back; but I fear I may bring trouble between the brothers by
visiting Father Ambrose. I will tarry to-night at Saint Cuthbert's cell,
where the old priest will give me a night's shelter; and I will send to
Father Ambrose to ask his advice before I go down to the convent.”

“By Our Lady,” said the falconer, “and that is a likely plan--and now,”
 he continued, exchanging his frankness of manner for a sort of awkward
embarrassment, as if he had somewhat to say that he had no ready means
to bring out--“and now, you wot well that I wear a pouch for my hawk's
meat, [Footnote: This same hag, like every thing belonging to falconry,
was esteemed an honourable distinction, and worn often by the nobility
and gentry. One of the Sommervilles of Camnethan was called _Sir John
with the red bag_, because it was his wont to wear his hawking pouch
covered with satin of that colour.] and so forth; but wot you what it is
lined with, Master Roland?”

“With leather, to be sure,” replied Roland, somewhat surprised at the
hesitation with which Adam Woodcock asked a question apparently so
simple.

“With leather, lad?” said Woodcock; “ay, and with silver to the boot of
that. See here,” he said, showing a secret slit in the lining of his bag
of office--“here they are, thirty good Harry groats as ever were struck
in bluff old Hal's time, and ten of them are right heartily at your
service; and now the murder is out.”

Roland's first idea was to refuse his assistance; but he recollected the
vows of humility which he had just taken upon him, and it occurred that
this was the opportunity to put his new-formed resolution to the test.
Assuming a strong command of himself, he answered Adam Woodcock with as
much frankness as his nature permitted him to wear, in doing what was
so contrary to his inclinations, that he accepted thankfully of his
kind offer, while, to soothe his own reviving pride, he could not help
adding, “he hoped soon to requite the obligation.”

“That as you list--that as you list, young man,” said the falconer, with
glee, counting out and delivering to his young friend the supply he had
so generously offered, and then adding, with great cheerfulness,--“Now
you may go through the world; for he that can back a horse, wind a horn,
hollow a greyhound, fly a hawk, and play at sword and buckler, with a
whole pair of shoes, a green jacket, and ten lily-white groats in his
pouch, may bid Father Care hang himself in his own jesses. Farewell, and
God be with you!”

So saying, and as if desirous to avoid the thanks of his companion,
he turned hastily round, and left Roland Graeme to pursue his journey
alone.




Chapter the Eight.


  The sacred tapers lights are gone.
  Gray moss has clad the altar stone,
  The holy image is o'erthrown,
    The bell has ceased to toll,
  The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk,
  The holy shrines to ruin sunk,
  Departed is the pious monk,
    God's blessing on his soul!
                             REDIVIVA.

The cell of Saint Cuthbert, as it was called, marked, or was supposed
to mark, one of those resting-places, which that venerable saint was
pleased to assign to his monks, when his convent, being driven from
Lindisfern by the Danes, became a peripatetic society of religionists,
and bearing their patron's body on their shoulders, transported him from
place to place through Scotland and the borders of England, until he was
pleased at length to spare them the pain of carrying him farther, and
to choose his ultimate place of rest in the lordly towers of Durham.
The odour of his sanctity remained behind him at each place where he had
granted the monks a transient respite from their labours; and proud were
those who could assign, as his temporary resting-place, any spot within
their vicinity. There were few cells more celebrated and honoured
than that of Saint Cuthbert, to which Roland Graeme now bent his
way, situated considerably to the north-west of the great Abbey of
Kennaquhair, on which it was dependent. In the neighbourhood were some
of those recommendations which weighed with the experienced priesthood
of Rome, in choosing their sites for places of religion.

There was a well, possessed of some medicinal qualities, which, of
course, claimed the saint for its guardian and patron, and occasionally
produced some advantage to the recluse who inhabited his cell, since
none could reasonably expect to benefit by the fountain who did not
extend their bounty to the saint's chaplain. A few rods of fertile land
afforded the monk his plot of garden ground; an eminence well clothed
with trees rose behind the cell, and sheltered it from, the north and
the east, while the front, opening to the south-west, looked up a wild
but pleasant valley, down which wandered a lively brook, which battled
with every stone that interrupted its passage.

The cell itself was rather plainly than rudely constructed--a low Gothic
building with two small apartments, one of which served the priest for
his dwelling-place, the other for his chapel. As there were few of
the secular clergy who durst venture to reside so near the Border, the
assistance of this monk in spiritual affairs had not been useless to the
community, while the Catholic religion retained the ascendancy; as he
could marry, christen, and administer the other sacraments of the Roman
church. Of late, however, as the Protestant doctrines gained ground, he
had found it convenient to live in close retirement, and to avoid, as
much as possible, drawing upon himself observation or animadversion. The
appearance of his habitation, however, when Roland Graeme came before
it in the close of the evening, plainly showed that his caution had been
finally ineffectual.

The page's first movement was to knock at the door, when he observed,
to his surprise, that it was open, not from being left unlatched, but
because, beat off its upper hinge, it was only fastened to the door-post
by the lower, and could therefore no longer perform its functions.
Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he knocked and
called, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the exterior of the
little dwelling before he ventured to enter it. The flowers, which had
been trained with care against the walls, seemed to have been recently
torn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands on the earth; the
latticed window was broken and dashed in. The garden, which the monk had
maintained by his constant labour in the highest order and beauty, bore
marks of having been lately trod down and destroyed by the hoofs of
animals, and the feet of men.

The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to rise beneath a canopy
of ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had secured
and protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost entirely
demolished, and the stones of which they were built were tumbled
into the well, as if for the purpose of choking up and destroying the
fountain, which, as it had shared in other days the honour of the saint,
was, in the present, doomed to partake his unpopularity. Part of the
roof had been pulled down from the house itself, and an attempt had
been made with crows and levers upon one of the angles, by which several
large corner-stones had been forced out of their place; but the solidity
of ancient mason-work had proved too great for the time or patience of
the assailants, and they had relinquished their task of destruction.
Such dilapidated buildings, after the lapse of years, during which
nature has gradually covered the effects of violence with creeping
plants, and with weather-stains, exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholy
beauty. But when the visible effects of violence appear raw and recent,
there is no feeling to mitigate the sense of devastation with which they
impress the spectators; and such was now the scene on which the youthful
page gazed, with the painful feelings it was qualified to excite.

When his first momentary surprise was over, Roland Graeme was at no loss
to conjecture the cause of these ravages. The destruction of the
Popish edifices did not take place at once throughout Scotland, but at
different times, and according to the spirit which actuated the
reformed clergy; some of whom instigated their hearers to these acts of
demolition, and others, with better taste and feeling, endeavoured to
protect the ancient shrines, while they desired to see them purified
from the objects which had attracted idolatrous devotion. From time to
time, therefore, the populace of the Scottish towns and villages,
when instigated either by their own feelings of abhorrence for Popish
superstition, or by the doctrines of the more zealous preachers, resumed
the work of destruction, and exercised it upon some sequestered church,
chapel, or cell, which had escaped the first burst of their indignation
against the religion of Rome. In many places, the vices of the Catholic
clergy, arising out of the wealth and the corruption of that tremendous
hierarchy, furnished too good an apology for wreaking vengeance upon
the splendid edifices which they inhabited; and of this an old Scottish
historian gives a remarkable instance.

“Why mourn ye,” said an aged matron, seeing the discontent of some of
the citizens, while a stately convent was burnt by the multitude,--“why
mourn ye for its destruction? If you knew half the flagitious wickedness
which has been perpetrated within that house, you would rather bless
the divine judgment, which permits not even the senseless walls that
screened such profligacy, any longer to cumber Christian ground.”

But although, in many instances, the destruction of the Roman Catholic
buildings might be, in the matron's way of judging, an act of justice,
and in others an act of policy, there is no doubt that the humour of
demolishing monuments of ancient piety and munificence, and that in a
poor country like Scotland, where there was no chance of their being
replaced, was both useless, mischievous, and barbarous.

In the present instance, the unpretending and quiet seclusion of the
monk of Saint Cuthbert's had hitherto saved him from the general
wreck; but it would seem ruin had now at length reached him. Anxious to
discover if he had at least escaped personal harm, Roland Graeme entered
the half ruined cell.

The interior of the building was in a state which fully justified the
opinion he had formed from its external injuries. The few rude utensils
of the solitary's hut were broken down, and lay scattered on the floor,
where it seemed as if a fire had been made with some of the fragments
to destroy the rest of his property, and to consume, in particular, the
rude old image of Saint Cuthbert, in its episcopal habit, which lay on
the hearth like Dagon of yore, shattered with the axe and scorched with
the flames, but only partially destroyed. In the little apartment which
served as a chapel, the altar was overthrown, and the four huge stones
of which it had been once composed lay scattered around the floor. The
large stone crucifix which occupied the niche behind the altar, and
fronted the supplicant while he paid his devotion there, had been pulled
down and dashed by its own weight into three fragments. There were marks
of sledge-hammers on each of these; yet the image had been saved from
utter demolition by the size and strength of the remaining fragments,
which, though much injured, retained enough of the original sculpture to
show what it had been intended to represent.

[Footnote: I may here observe, that this is entirely an ideal scene.
Saint Cuthbert, a person of established sanctity, had, no doubt, several
places of worship on the Borders, where he flourished whilst living;
but Tillmouth Chapel is the only one which bears some resemblance to
the hermitage described in the text. It has, indeed, a well, famous
for gratifying three wishes for every worshipper who shall quaff the
fountain with sufficient belief in its efficacy. At this spot the Saint
is said to have landed in his stone coffin, in which he sailed down the
Tweed from Melrose and here the stone coffin long lay, in evidence of
the fact. The late Sir Francis Blake Delaval is said to have taken the
exact measure of the coffin, and to have ascertained, by hydrostatic
principles, that it might have actually swum. A profane farmer in the
neighborhood announced his intention of converting this last bed of
the Saint into a trough for his swine; but the profanation was rendered
impossible, either by the Saint, or by some pious votary in his behalf,
for on the following morning the stone sarcophargus was found broken in
two fragments.

Tillmouth Chapel, with these points of resemblance, lies, however, in
exactly the opposite direction as regards Melrose, which the supposed
cell of St. Cuthbert is said to have borne towards Kennaquhair.]

Roland Graeme, secretly nursed in the tenets of Rome, saw with horror
the profanation of the most sacred emblem, according to his creed, of
our holy religion.

“It is the badge of our redemption,” he said, “which the felons have
dared to violate--would to God my weak strength were able to replace
it--my humble strength, to atone for the sacrilege!”

He stooped to the task he first meditated, and with a sudden, and to
himself almost an incredible exertion of power, he lifted up the one
extremity of the lower shaft of the cross, and rested it upon the edge
of the large stone which served for its pedestal. Encouraged by this
success, he applied his force to the other extremity, and, to his own
astonishment, succeeded so far as to erect the lower end of the limb
into the socket, out of which it had been forced, and to place this
fragment of the image upright.

While he was employed in this labour, or rather at the very moment when
he had accomplished the elevation of the fragment, a voice, in thrilling
and well-known accents, spoke behind him these words:--“Well done,
thou good and faithful servant! Thus would I again meet the child of my
love--the hope of my aged eyes.”

Roland turned round in astonishment, and the tall commanding form of
Magdalen Graeme stood beside him. She was arrayed in a sort of loose
habit, in form like that worn by penitents in Catholic countries, but
black in colour, and approaching as near to a pilgrim's cloak as it was
safe to wear in a country where the suspicion of Catholic devotion
in many places endangered the safety of those who were suspected of
attachment to the ancient faith. Roland Graeme threw himself at her
feet. She raised and embraced him, with affection indeed, but not
unmixed with gravity which amounted almost to sternness.

“Thou hast kept well,” she said, “the bird in thy bosom. [Footnote: An
expression used by Sir Ralph Percy, slain in the battle of Hedgly-moor
in 1464, when dying, to express his having preserved unstained his
fidelity to the house of Lancaster.] As a boy, as a youth, thou hast
held fast thy faith amongst heretics--thou hast kept thy secret and mine
own amongst thine enemies. I wept when I parted from you--I who seldom
weep, then shed tears, less for thy death than for thy spiritual
danger--I dared not even see thee to bid thee a last farewell--my grief,
my swelling grief, had betrayed me to these heretics. But thou hast been
faithful--down, down on thy knees before the holy sign, which evil men
injure and blaspheme; down, and praise saints and angels for the grace
they have done thee, in preserving thee from the leprous plague which
cleaves to the house in which thou wert nurtured.”

“If, my mother--so I must ever call you” replied Graeme,--“if I am
returned such as thou wouldst wish me, thou must thank the care of the
pious father Ambrose, whose instructions confirmed your early precepts,
and taught me at once to be faithful and to be silent.”

“Be he blessed for it,” said she; “blessed in the cell and in the field,
in the pulpit and at the altar--the saints rain blessings on him!--they
are just, and employ his pious care to counteract the evils which his
detested brother works against the realm and the church,--but he knew
not of thy lineage?”

“I could not myself tell him that,” answered Roland. “I knew but darkly
from your words, that Sir Halbert Glendinning holds mine inheritance,
and that I am of blood as noble as runs in the veins of any Scottish
Baron--these are things not to be forgotten, but for the explanation I
must now look to you.”

“And when time suits, thou shalt not look for it in vain. But men say,
my son, that thou art bold and sudden; and those who bear such tempers
are not lightly to be trusted with what will strongly move them.”

“Say rather, my mother,” returned Roland Graeme, “that I am laggard and
cold-blooded--what patience or endurance can you require of which _he_
is not capable, who for years has heard his religion ridiculed and
insulted, yet failed to plunge his dagger into the blasphemer's bosom!”

“Be contented, my child,” replied Magdalen Graeme; “the time, which then
and even now demands patience, will soon ripen to that of effort and
action--great events are on the wing, and thou,--thou shalt have thy
share in advancing them. Thou hast relinquished the service of the Lady
of Avenel?”

“I have been dismissed from it, my mother--I have lived to be dismissed,
as if I were the meanest of the train.”

“It is the better, my child,” replied she; “thy mind will be the more
hardened to undertake that which must be performed.”

“Let it be nothing, then, against the Lady of Avenel,” said the page,
“as thy look and words seem to imply. I have eaten her bread--I have
experienced her favour--I will neither injure nor betray her.”

“Of that hereafter, my son,” said she; “but learn this, that it is not
for thee to capitulate in thy duty, and to say this will I do, and that
will I leave undone--No, Roland! God and man will no longer abide the
wickedness of this generation. Seest thou these fragments--knowest
thou what they represent?--and canst thou think it is for thee to make
distinctions amongst a race so accursed by Heaven, that they renounce,
violate, blaspheme, and destroy, whatsoever we are commanded to believe
in, whatsoever we are commanded to reverence?”

As she spoke, she bent her head towards the broken image, with a
countenance in which strong resentment and zeal were mingled with an
expression of ecstatic devotion; she raised her left hand aloft as
in the act of making a vow, and thus proceeded; “Bear witness for me,
blessed symbol of our salvation, bear witness, holy saint, within whose
violated temple we stand, that as it is not for vengeance of my own
that my hate pursues these people, so neither, for any favour or earthly
affection towards any amongst them, will I withdraw my hand from the
plough, when it shall pass through the devoted furrow! Bear witness,
holy saint, once thyself a wanderer and fugitive as we are now--bear
witness, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven--bear witness, saints and
angels!”

In this high train of enthusiasm, she stood, raising her eyes through
the fractured roof of the vault, to the stars which now began to twinkle
through the pale twilight, while the long gray tresses which hung
down over her shoulders waved in the night-breeze, which the chasm and
fractured windows admitted freely.

Roland Graeme was too much awed by early habits, as well as by the
mysterious import of her words, to ask for farther explanation of the
purpose she obscurely hinted at. Nor did she farther press him on the
subject; for, having concluded her prayer or obtestation, by clasping
her hands together with solemnity, and then signing herself with the
cross, she again addressed her grandson, in a tone more adapted to the
ordinary business of life.

“Thou must hence,” she said, “Roland, thou must hence, but not till
morning--And now, how wilt thou shift for thy night's quarters?--thou
hast been more softly bred than when we were companions in the misty
hills of Cumberland and Liddesdale.”

“I have at least preserved, my good mother, the habits which I then
learned--can lie hard, feed sparingly, and think it no hardship. Since I
was a wanderer with thee on the hills, I have been a hunter, and fisher,
and fowler, and each of these is accustomed to sleep freely in a worse
shelter than sacrilege has left us here.”

“Than sacrilege has left us here!” said the matron, repeating his words,
and pausing on them. “Most true, my son; and God's faithful children are
now worst sheltered, when they lodge in God's own house and the demesne
of his blessed saints. We shall sleep cold here, under the nightwind,
which whistles through the breaches which heresy has made. They shall
lie warmer who made them--ay, and through a long hereafter.”

Notwithstanding the wild and singular expression of this female, she
appeared to retain towards Roland Graeme, in a strong degree, that
affectionate and sedulous love which women bear to their nurslings,
and the children dependent on their care. It seemed as if she would not
permit him to do aught for himself which in former days her attention
had been used to do for him, and that she considered the tall stripling
before her as being equally dependent on her careful attention as
when he was the orphan child, who had owed all to her affectionate
solicitude.

“What hast thou to eat now?” she said, as, leaving the chapel, they went
into the deserted habitation of the priest; “or what means of kindling
a fire, to defend thee from this raw and inclement air? Poor child! thou
hast made slight provision for a long journey; nor hast thou skill to
help thyself by wit, when means are scanty. But Our Lady has placed by
thy side one to whom want, in all its forms, is as familiar as plenty
and splendour have formerly been. And with want, Roland, come the arts
of which she is the inventor.”

With an active and officious diligence, which strangely contrasted with
her late abstracted and high tone of Catholic devotion, she set about
her domestic arrangements for the evening. A pouch, which was hidden
under her garment, produced a flint and steel, and from the scattered
fragments around (those pertaining to the image of Saint Cuthbert
scrupulously excepted) she obtained splinters sufficient to raise a
sparkling and cheerful fire on the hearth of the deserted cell.

“And now,” she said, “for needful food.”

“Think not of it, mother,” said Roland, “unless you yourself feel
hunger. It is a little thing for me to endure a night's abstinence, and
a small atonement for the necessary transgression of the rules of the
Church upon which I was compelled during my stay in the castle.”

“Hunger for myself!” answered the matron--“Know, youth, that a mother
knows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied.” And with
affectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner, she
added, “Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are young,
and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed with.
Husband your strength, my child,--your sovereign, your religion, your
country, require it. Let age macerate by fast and vigil a body which can
only suffer; let youth, in these active times, nourish the limbs and the
strength which action requires.”

While she thus spoke, the scrip, which had produced the means of
striking fire, furnished provision for a meal; of which she herself
scarce partook, but anxiously watched her charge, taking a pleasure,
resembling that of an epicure, in each morsel which he swallowed with a
youthful appetite which abstinence had rendered unusually sharp. Roland
readily obeyed her recommendations, and ate the food which she so
affectionately and earnestly placed before him. But she shook her head
when invited by him in return to partake of the refreshment her own
cares had furnished; and when his solicitude became more pressing, she
refused him in a loftier tone of rejection.

“Young man,” she said, “you know not to whom or of what you speak. They
to whom Heaven declares its purpose must merit its communication by
mortifying the senses; they have that within which requires not the
superfluity of earthly nutriment, which is necessary to those who are
without the sphere of the Vision. To them the watch spent in prayer is
a refreshing slumber, and the sense of doing the will of Heaven is a
richer banquet than the tables of monarchs can spread before them!--But
do thou sleep soft, my son,” she said, relapsing from the tone of
fanaticism into that of maternal affection and tenderness; “do thou
sleep sound while life is but young with thee, and the cares of the day
can be drowned in the slumbers of the evening. Different is thy duty and
mine, and as different the means by which we must qualify and strengthen
ourselves to perform it. From thee is demanded strength of body--from
me, strength of soul.”

When she thus spoke, she prepared with ready address a pallet-couch,
composed partly of the dried leaves which had once furnished a bed to
the solitary, and the guests who occasionally received his hospitality,
and which, neglected by the destroyers of his humble cell, had remained
little disturbed in the corner allotted for them. To these her care
added some of the vestures which lay torn and scattered on the floor.
With a zealous hand she selected all such as appeared to have made
any part of the sacerdotal vestments, laying them aside as sacred
from ordinary purposes, and with the rest she made, with dexterous
promptness, such a bed as a weary man might willingly stretch himself
on; and during the time she was preparing it, rejected, even with
acrimony, any attempt which the youth made to assist her, or any
entreaty which he urged, that she would accept of the place of rest for
her own use. “Sleep thou,” said she, “Roland Graeme, sleep thou--the
persecuted, the disinherited orphan--the son of an ill-fated
mother--sleep thou! I go to pray in the chapel beside thee.”

The manner was too enthusiastically earnest, too obstinately firm, to
permit Roland Graeme to dispute her will any farther. Yet he felt some
shame in giving way to it. It seemed as if she had forgotten the years
that had passed away since their parting; and expected to meet, in the
tall, indulged, and wilful youth, whom she had recovered, the passive
obedience of the child whom she had left in the Castle of Avenel. This
did not fail to hurt her grandson's characteristic and constitutional
pride. He obeyed, indeed, awed into submission by the sudden recurrence
of former subordination, and by feelings of affection and gratitude.
Still, however, he felt the yoke.

“Have I relinquished the hawk and the hound,” he said, “to become the
pupil of her pleasure, as if I were still a child?--I, whom even my
envious mates allowed to be superior in those exercises which they took
most pains to acquire, and which came to me naturally, as if a knowledge
of them had been my birthright? This may not, and must not be. I will be
no reclaimed sparrow-hawk, who is carried hooded on a woman's wrist,
and has his quarry only shown to him when his eyes are uncovered for his
flight. I will know her purpose ere it is proposed to me to aid it.”

These, and other thoughts, streamed through the mind of Roland Graeme;
and although wearied with the fatigues of the day, it was long ere he
could compose himself to rest.




Chapter the Ninth.


  Kneel with me--swear it--'tis not in words I trust,
  Save when they're fenced with an appeal to Heaven.
                                   OLD PLAY

After passing the night in that sound sleep for which agitation and
fatigue had prepared him, Roland was awakened by the fresh morning
air, and by the beams of the rising sun. His first feeling was that of
surprise; for, instead of looking forth from a turret window on the
Lake of Avenel, which was the prospect his former apartment afforded,
an unlatticed aperture gave him the view of the demolished garden of the
banished anchorite. He sat up on his couch of leaves, and arranged in
his memory, not without wonder, the singular events of the preceding
day, which appeared the more surprising the more he considered them.
He had lost the protectress of his youth, and, in the same day, he
had recovered the guide and guardian of his childhood. The former
deprivation he felt ought to be matter of unceasing regret, and
it seemed as if the latter could hardly be the subject of unmixed
self-congratulation. He remembered this person, who had stood to him in
the relation of a mother, as equally affectionate in her attention, and
absolute in her authority. A singular mixture of love and fear attended
upon his early remembrances as they were connected with her; and the
fear that she might desire to resume the same absolute control over
his motions--a fear which her conduct of yesterday did not tend much to
dissipate--weighed heavily against the joy of this second meeting.

“She cannot mean,” said his rising pride, “to lead and direct me as
a pupil, when I am at the age of judging of my own actions?--this she
cannot mean, or meaning it, will feel herself strangely deceived.”

A sense of gratitude towards the person against whom his heart thus
rebelled, checked his course of feeling. He resisted the thoughts which
involuntarily arose in his mind, as he would have resisted an actual
instigation of the foul fiend; and, to aid him in his struggle, he felt
for his beads. But, in his hasty departure from the Castle of Avenel, he
had forgotten and left them behind him.

“This is yet worse,” he said; “but two things I learned of her under the
most deadly charge of secrecy--to tell my beads, and to conceal that I
did so; and I have kept my word till now; and when she shall ask me
for the rosary, I must say I have forgotten it! Do I deserve she should
believe me when. I say I have kept the secret of my faith, when I set so
light by its symbol?”

He paced the floor in anxious agitation. In fact, his attachment to
his faith was of a nature very different from that which animated the
enthusiastic matron, but which, notwithstanding, it would have been his
last thought to relinquish.

The early charges impressed on him by his grandmother, had been
instilled into a mind and memory of a character peculiarly tenacious.
Child as he was, he was proud of the confidence reposed in his
discretion, and resolved to show that it had not been rashly intrusted
to him. At the same time, his resolution was no more than that of
a child, and must, necessarily, have gradually faded away under the
operation both of precept and example, during his residence at the
Castle of Avenel, but for the exhortations of Father Ambrose, who, in
his lay estate, had been called Edward Glendinning. This zealous
monk had been apprized, by an unsigned letter placed in his hand by
a pilgrim, that a child educated in the Catholic faith was now in the
Castle of Avenel, perilously situated, (so was the scroll expressed,)
as ever the three children who were cast into the fiery furnace of
persecution. The letter threw upon Father Ambrose the fault, should
this solitary lamb, unwillingly left within the demesnes of the prowling
wolf, become his final prey. There needed no farther exhortation to the
monk than the idea that a soul might be endangered, and that a Catholic
might become an apostate; and he made his visits more frequent than
usual to the castle of Avenel, lest, through want of the private
encouragement and instruction which he always found some opportunity of
dispensing, the church should lose a proselyte, and, according to the
Romish creed, the devil acquire a soul.

Still these interviews were rare; and though they encouraged the
solitary boy to keep his secret and hold fast his religion, they were
neither frequent nor long enough to inspire him with any thing beyond
a blind attachment to the observances which the priest recommended. He
adhered to the forms of his religion rather because he felt it would
be dishonourable to change that of his fathers, than from any rational
conviction or sincere belief of its mysterious doctrines. It was a
principal part of the distinction which, in his own opinion, singled him
out from those with whom he lived, and gave him an additional, though an
internal and concealed reason, for contemning those of the household who
showed an undisguised dislike of him, and for hardening himself against
the instructions of the chaplain, Henry Warden.

“The fanatic preacher,” he thought within himself, during some one
of the chaplain's frequent discourses against the Church of Rome, “he
little knows whose ears are receiving his profane doctrine, and with
what contempt and abhorrence they hear his blasphemies against the holy
religion by which kings have been crowned, and for which martyrs have
died!”

But in such proud feelings of defiance of heresy, as it was termed, and
of its professors, which associated the Catholic religion with a
sense of generous independence, and that of the Protestants with the
subjugation of his mind and temper to the direction of Mr. Warden, began
and ended the faith of Roland Graeme, who, independently of the pride of
singularity, sought not to understand, and had no one to expound to
him, the peculiarities of the tenets which he professed. His regret,
therefore, at missing the rosary which had been conveyed to him through
the hands of Father Ambrose, was rather the shame of a soldier who has
dropped his cockade, or badge of service, than that of a zealous votary
who had forgotten a visible symbol of his religion.

His thoughts on the subject, however, were mortifying, and the more
so from apprehension that his negligence must reach the ears of
his relative. He felt it could be no one but her who had secretly
transmitted these beads to Father Ambrose for his use, and that his
carelessness was but an indifferent requital of her kindness.

“Nor will she omit to ask me about them,” said he to himself; “for hers
is a zeal which age cannot quell; and if she has not quitted her wont,
my answer will not fail to incense her.”

While he thus communed with himself, Magdalen Graeme entered the
apartment. “The blessing of the morning on your youthful head, my son,”
 she said, with a solemnity of expression which thrilled the youth to the
heart, so sad and earnest did the benediction flow from her lips, in a
tone where devotion was blended with affection. “And thou hast started
thus early from thy couch to catch the first breath of the dawn? But it
is not well, my Roland. Enjoy slumber while thou canst; the time is not
far behind when the waking eye must be thy portion, as well as mine.”

She uttered these words with an affectionate and anxious tone, which
showed, that devotional as were the habitual exercises of her mind, the
thoughts of her nursling yet b

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