Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/484

RV 416 (Rh) When Sir Piercie Shafton had departed, and the abbot was about to betake himself to his own cell, he was surprised by an unknown person anxiously requiring a conference, who, being admitted, proved to be no other than Henry Warden. The abbot started: as he entered, and exclaimed, angrily, 'Ha! are the few hours that fate allows him who may last wear the mitre of this house, not to be excused from the intrusion of heresy? Dost thou come,' he said, 'to enjoy the hopes which fate holds out to thy demented and accursed sect, to see the besom of destruction sweep away the pride of old religion; to deface our shrines; to mutilate and lay waste the bodies of our benefactors, as well as their sepulchres; to destroy the pinnacles and carved work of God's house, and Our Lady's?'

'Peace, William Allan!' said the Protestant preacher, with dignified composure; 'for none of these purposes do I come. I would have these stately shrines deprived of the idols which, no longer simply regarded as the effigies of the good and of the wise, have become the objects of foul idolatry. I would otherwise have its ornaments subsist, unless as they are, or may be, a snare to the souls of men; and especially do I condemn those ravages which have been made by the heady fury of the people, stung into zeal against will-worship by bloody persecution. Against such wanton devastations I lift my testimony.'

'Idle distinguisher that thou art!' said the Abbot Eustace, interrupting him; 'what signifies the pretext under which thou dost despoil the house of God? and why at this present emergence wilt thou insult the master of it by thy ill-omened presence?'

'Thou art unjust, William Allan,' said Warden; 'but I am not the less settled in my resolution. Thou hast protected me some time since at the hazard of thy rank, and what I know thou boldest still dearer, at the risk of thy reputation with thine own sect. Our party is now uppermost, and, believe me, I have come down the valley, in which thou didst quarter me for sequestration's sake, simply with the wish to keep my engagements to thee.'

'Aye,' answered the abbot, 'and it may be, that my listening to that worldly and infirm compassion which pleaded with me for thy life, is now avenged by this