Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/167

RV 99 (Rh) in ire, 'An it were not for the presence of the venerable lord abbot, thou knave'

'Nay, an thou wouldst try conclusions,' said Christie of the Clinthill, 'I will meet thee at daybreak by Saint Mary's Well.'

'Hardened wretch!' said Father Eustace, 'art thou but this instant delivered from death, and dost thou so soon nurse thoughts of slaughter?'

'I will meet with thee ere it be long, thou knave,' said the bailie, 'and teach thee thine Oremus.'

'I will meet thy cattle in a moonlight night before that day,' said he of the Clinthill.

'I will have thee by the neck one misty morning, thou strong thief,' answered the secular officer of the Church.

'Thou art thyself as strong a thief as ever rode,' retorted Christie; 'and if the worms were once feasting on that fat carcass of thine, I might well hope to have thine office, by favour of these reverend men.'

'A cast of their office, and a cast of mine,' answered the bailie; 'a cord and a confessor, that is all thou wilt have from us.'

'Sirs,' said the sub-prior, observing that his brethren began to take more interest than was exactly decorous in this wrangling betwixt justice and iniquity, 'I pray you both to depart. Master Bailie, retire with your halberdiers and trouble not the man whom we have dismissed. And thou, Christie, or whatever be thy name, take thy departure, and remember thou owest thy life to the lord abbot's clemency.'

'Nay, as to that,' answered Christie, 'I judge that I owe it to your own; but impute it to whom ye list, I owe a life among ye, and there is an end.' And whistling as he went, he left the apartment, seeming as if he held the life which he had forfeited not worthy further thanks.

'Obstinate even to brutality!' said Father Eustace; 'and yet who knows but some better ore may lie under so rude an exterior?'

'Save a thief from the gallows,' said the sacristan—'you know the rest of the proverb; and admitting, as may Heaven grant, that our lives and limbs are safe from this