Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/153

RV 85 (Rh) will protect her and you, and all good children. See how fairly she is represented, with her gown covered with golden stars.'

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

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

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

'Aye, and to make such figures as these blessed saints, and especially these two Marys?' said the boy.

'With their blessing,' said the sub-prior, 'I can teach you that art too, so far as I am myself capable of showing and you of learning it.'

'Then,' said Edward, 'will I paint Mary's picture; and remember you are to bring back the black book; that you must promise me.'

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

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

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