Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/134

RV 66 (Rh) and had been discovered in one of the most hidden and sequestered recesses of the halidome of Saint Mary's.

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

'Being,' said the abbot, 'as it is, an heretical translation, it may be thought that Satan may have power over it.'

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

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

'I wish him no worse lesson,' said the sacristan, 'than to go swimming merrily down the river with a ghost behind,