Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/156

RV 88 (Rh) aloud, 'be thine errand what it will, to depart and trouble me no more! False spirit, thou canst not appal any save those who do the work negligently.'

The voice immediately answered:

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

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

He moved around accordingly, but with precaution, and not without fear; for he neither knew the manner in which, nor the place where his journey might be next interrupted by his invisible attendant. He descended the glen without interruption for about a mile farther, when, just at the spot where the brook approached the steep hill, with a winding so abrupt as to leave scarcely room for a horse to pass, the mule was again visited with the same symptoms of terror which had before interrupted her course. Better acquainted than before with the cause of her restiveness, the priest employed no effort to make her proceed, but addressed himself to the object, which he doubted not was the same that had formerly interrupted him, in the words of solemn exorcism prescribed by the Church of Rome on such occasions.