Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/372

RV 304 (Rh) his apartment, understanding he was to be guarded there for the night, as he wished to make some alteration in his apparel.$n$

'Aye, aye,' said the monk, muttering as he went up the winding stair, 'carry him his trumpery with all dispatch. Alas! that man, with so many noble objects of pursuit, will amuse himself like a jackanape, with a laced jerkin and a cap and bells!—I must now to the melancholy work of consoling that which is wellnigh inconsolable, a mother weeping for her first-born.'

Advancing, after a gentle knock, into the apartment of the women, lie found that Mary Avenel had retired to bed, extremely indisposed, and that Dame Glendinning and Tibb were indulging their sorrows by the side of a decaying fire and by the light of a small iron lamp, or cruize, as it was termed. Poor Elspeth's apron was thrown over her head, and bitterly did she sob and weep for 'her beautiful, her brave,—the very image of her dear Simon Glendinning, the stay of her widowhood and the support of her old age.'

The faithful Tibb echoed her complaints, and, more violently clamorous, made deep promises of revenge on Sir Piercie Shafton, 'if there were a man left in the south who could draw a whinger, or a woman that could thraw a rape.' The presence of the sub-prior imposed silence on these clamours. He sat down by the unfortunate mother,