Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/480

RV 412 (Rh) can hold the reins of power in a realm so wild as ours. We will now go on to Saint Mary's, and see ourselves after the state of that house. Glendinning, look to that woman, and protect her. What the fiend, man, hast thou got in thine arms? an infant, as I live! where couldst thou find such a charge, at such a place and moment?'

Halbert Glendinning briefly told the story. The earl rode forward to the place where the body of Julian Avenel lay, with his unhappy companion's arms wrapped around him like the trunk of an uprooted oak borne down by the tempest with all its ivy garlands. Both were cold dead. Murray was touched in an unwonted degree, remembering, perhaps, his own birth. 'What have they to answer for, Douglas,' he said, 'who thus abuse the sweetest gifts of affection?'

The Earl of Morton, unhappy in his marriage, was a libertine in his amours.

'You must ask that question of Henry Warden, my lord, or of John Knox; I am but a wild counsellor in women's matters.'

'Forward to Saint Mary's,' said the Earl; 'pass the word on. Glendinning, give the infant to this same female cavalier, and let it be taken charge of. Let no dishonour be done to the dead bodies, and call on the country to bury or remove them. Forward, I say, my masters!'

news of the lost battle, so quickly carried by the fugitives to the village and convent, had spread the greatest alarm among the inhabitants. The sacristan and other monks counselled flight; the treasurer recommended that the church plate should be offered as a tribute to bribe the English officer; the abbot alone was unmoved and undaunted.

'My brethren,' he said, 'since God has not given our