Page:Walter Scott - The Monastery (Henry Frowde, 1912).djvu/50

 'I think,' said I, 'there is no part of this ancient structure with which you are not as well acquainted as was the mason who built it. But if your information be correct, he who made out these bearings must have had better eyes than mine.

'His eyes,' said the Benedictine, 'have long been closed in death; probably when he inspected the monument it was in a more perfect state, or he may have derived his information from the tradition of the place.

'I assure you,' said I, 'that no such tradition now exists. I have made several reconnoissances among the old people, in hopes to learn something of the armorial bearings, but I never heard of such a circumstance. It seems odd that you should have acquired it in a foreign land.

'These trifling particulars,' he replied, 'were formerly looked upon as more important, and they were sanctified to the exiles who retained recollection of them, because they related to a place dear indeed to memory but which their eyes could never again behold. It is possible, in like manner, that on the Potomac or Susquehannah, you may find traditions current concerning places in England, which are utterly forgotten in the neighbourhood where they originated. But to my purpose. In this recess, marked by the armorial bearings, lies buried a treasure, and it is in order to remove it that I have undertaken my present journey.

'A treasure!' echoed I, in astonishment.

'Yes,' replied the monk, 'an inestimable treasure, for those who know how to use it rightly.'

I own my ears did tingle a little at the word treasure, and that a handsome tilbury, with a neat groom in blue and scarlet livery, having a smart cockade on his glazed hat, seemed as it were to glide across the room before my eyes, while a voice, as of a crier, pronounced in my ear, 'Captain Clutterbuck's tilbury—drive up.' But I resisted the devil, and he fled from me.

'I believe,' said I, 'all hidden treasure belongs either to the king or the lord of the soil; and as I have served his Majesty, I cannot concern myself in any adventure which may have an end in the Court of Exchequer.

'The treasure I seek,' said the stranger, smiling, 'will