Page:Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations (Volume 2).djvu/127



CCOMPANIED by the venerable father Jacob, an aged franciscan monk of the bare-footed order, Eppo von Steinanger, entered the cell of the prison where lay Gregory the outlaw, late the terror of all the Polish frontiers. Numerous were the acts of barbarity, violence, rapine and sacrilege which he had committed, so that his very name struck terror all around; yet his early years had been far from announcing such a character; for, born of honest and pious parents, he had been trained up by them for the church, of which he promised, at one time, to become a shining ornament. How grievously then did his present abandoned state afflict father Jacob, the affectionate preceptor who