Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/166

RV 98 (Rh) chains, and suffered to depart uninjured. And here, friend,' he added, giving him the golden crucifix, 'is the image for which thou wert willing to stain thy hands with murder. View it well, and may it inspire thee with other and better thoughts than those which referred to it as a piece of bullion! Part with it, nevertheless, if thy necessities require, and get thee one of such coarse substance that mammon shall have no share in any of the reflections to which it gives rise. It was the bequest of a dear friend to me; but dearer service can it never do than that of winning a soul to Heaven.'

The Borderer, now freed from his chains, stood gazing alternately on the sub-prior and on the golden crucifix. 'By Saint Giles,' said he, 'I understand ye not! An ye give me gold for couching my lance at thee, what would you give me to level it at a heretic?'

'The church,' said the sub-prior, 'will try the effect of her spiritual censures to bring these stray sheep into the fold, ere she employ the edge of the sword of Saint Peter.'

'Aye, but,' said the ruffian, 'they say the Primate recommends a little strangling and burning in aid both of censure and of sword. But fare ye weel, I owe you a life, and it may be I will not forget my debt.'

The bailie now came bustling in, dressed in his blue coat and bandaliers, and attended by two or three halberdiers. 'I have been a thought too late in waiting upon your reverend lordship. I am grown somewhat fatter since the field of Pinkie, and my leathern coat slips not on so soon as it was wont; but the dungeon is ready, and though, as I said, I have been somewhat late'

Here his intended prisoner walked gravely up to the officer's nose, to his great amazement.

'You have been indeed somewhat late, bailie,' said he, 'and I am greatly obligated to your buff-coat, and to the time you took to put it on. If the secular arm had arrived some quarter of an hour sooner, I had been out of the reach of spiritual grace; but as it is, I wish you good even, and a safe riddance out of your garment of durance, in which you have much the air of a hog in armour.'

Wroth was the bailie with this comparison, and exclaimed