Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/439

RV 371 (Rh) father, your pleasure is doubtless to be done to our power.'

'Go to, woman,' said the sub-prior; 'send for workmen from the clachan, and let them charge the expense of their repairs to the community, and I will give the treasurer warrant to allow them. Moreover, in settling the rental mails, and feu-duties, thou shalt have allowance for the trouble and charges to which thou art now put, and I will cause strict search to be made after thy son.'

The dame curtsied deep and low at each favourable expression; and when the sub-prior had done speaking, she added her further hope that the sub-prior would hold some communing with her gossip the miller, concerning the fate of his daughter, and expound to him that the chance had by no means happened through any negligence on her part.

'I sair doubt me, father,' she said, 'whether Mysie finds her way back to the mill in a hurry; but it was all her father's own fault that let her run lamping about the country, riding on bare-backed naigs, and never settling to do a turn of wark within doors, unless it were to dress dainties at dinner-time for his ain kyte.'

'You remind me, dame, of another matter of urgency,' said Father Eustace; 'and, 'God knows, too many of them press on me at this moment. This English knight must be sought out, and explanation given to him of these most strange chances. The giddy girl must also be recovered. If she hath suffered in reputation by this unhappy mistake, I will not hold myself innocent of the disgrace. Yet how to find them out I know not.'

'So please you,' said Christie of the Clinthill, 'I am willing to take the chase, and bring them back by fair means or foul; for though you have always looked as black as night at me, whenever we have forgathered, yet I have not forgotten that had it not been for you, my neck would have kend the weight of my four quarters. If any man can track the tread of them, I will say in the face of both Merse and Teviotdale, and take the Forest to boot, I am that man. But first I have matters to treat of on my master's score, if you will permit me to ride down the glen with you.'