Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/163

RV 95 (Rh) expression, while he exclaimed—'The devil! the devil himself, brings the dead back upon the living!'

'Nay,' said a monk to him, 'say rather that Our Lady foils the attempts of the wicked on her faithful servants: our dear brother lives and moves.'

'Lives and moves!' said the ruffian, rising and shuffling towards the sub-prior as well as his chains would permit; 'nay, then, I will never trust ashen shaft and steel point more. It is even so,' he added, as he gazed on the sub-prior with astonishment; 'neither wem nor wound—not as much as a rent in his frock! '

'And whence should my wound have come?' said Father Eustace.

'From the good lance that never failed me before,' replied Christie of the Clinthill.

'Heaven absolve thee for thy purpose!' said the subprior; 'wouldst thou have slain a servant of the altar?'

'To choose!' answered Christie; 'the Fifemen say, an the whole pack of ye were slain, there were more lost at Flodden.'

'Villain! art thou heretic as well as murderer?'

'Not I, by Saint Giles,' replied the rider; 'I listened blithely enough to the Laird of Monance when he told me ye were all cheats and knaves; but when he would have had me go hear one Wiseheart, a gospeller as they call him, he might as well have persuaded the wild colt that had flung one rider to kneel down and help another into the saddle.'

'There is some goodness about him yet,' said the sacristan to the abbot, who at that moment entered. 'He refused to hear a heretic preacher.'

'The better for him in the next world,' answered the abbot. 'Prepare for death, my son; we deliver thee over to the secular arm of our bailie, for execution on the Gallow-hill by peep of light.'

'Amen!' said the ruffian; ''tis the end I must have come by sooner or later; and what care I whether I feed the crows at Saint Mary's or at Carlisle?'

'Let me implore your reverend patience for an instant,' said the sub-prior; 'until I shall inquire'

'What!' exclaimed the abbot, observing him for the first