The cold-blooded limitation of the offered shelter to one night only,
and that tendered most unwillingly, offended the pride of the
discarded favourite.

"I would rather sleep on the fresh heather, as I have done many a
night on less occasion," said Roland Graeme, "than in the smoky garret
of your father, that smells of peat smoke and usquebaugh like a
Highlander's plaid."

"You may choose, my master, if you are so nice," replied Ralph Fisher;
"you may be glad to smell a peat-fire, and usquebaugh too, if you
journey long in the fashion you propose. You might have said
God-a-mercy for your proffer, though--it is not every one that will
put themselves in the way of ill-will by harbouring a discarded
serving-man."

"Ralph," said Roland Graeme, "I would pray you to remember that I have
switched you before now, and this is the same riding-wand which you
have tasted."

Ralph, who was a thickset clownish figure, arrived at his full
strength, and conscious of the most complete personal superiority,
laughed contemptuously at the threats of the slight-made stripling.

"It may be the same wand," he said, "but not the same hand; and that
is as good rhyme as if it were in a ballad. Look you, my Lady's page
that was, when your switch was up, it was no fear of you, but of your
betters, that kept mine down--and I wot not what hinders me from
clearing old scores with this hazel rung, and showing you it was your
Lady's livery-coat which I spared, and not your flesh and blood,
Master Roland."

In the midst of his rage, Roland Graeme was just wise enough to see,
that by continuing this altercation, he would subject himself to very
rude treatment from the boor, who was so much older and stronger than
himself; and while his antagonist, with a sort of jeering laugh of
defiance, seemed to provoke the contest, he felt the full bitterness
of his own degraded condition, and burst into a passion of tears,
which he in vain endeavoured to conceal with both his hands.

Even the rough churl was moved with the distress of his quondam
companion.

"Nay, Master Roland," he said, "I did but as 'twere jest with thee--I
would not harm thee, man, were it but for old acquaintance sake. But
ever look to a man's inches ere you talk of switching--why, thine arm,
man, is but like a spindle compared to mine.--But hark, I hear old
Adam Woodcock hollowing to his hawk--Come along, man, we will have a
merry afternoon, and go jollily to my father's in spite of the
peat-smoke and usquebaugh to boot. Maybe we may put you into some
honest way of winning your bread, though it's hard to come by in these
broken times."

The unfortunate page made no answer, nor did he withdraw his hands
from his face, and Fisher continued in what he imagined a suitable
tone of comfort.

"Why, man, when you were my Lady's minion, men held you proud, and
some thought you a Papist, and I wot not what; and so, now that you
have no one to bear you out, you must be companionable and hearty, and
wait on the minister's examinations, and put these things out of
folk's head; and if he says you are in fault, you must jouk your head
to the stream; and if a gentleman, or a gentleman's gentleman, give
you a rough word, or a light blow, you must only say, thank you for
dusting my doublet, or the like, as I have done by you.--But hark to
Woodcock's whistle again. Come, and I will teach you all the trick
on't as we go on."

"I thank you," said Roland Graeme, endeavouring to assume an air of
indifference and of superiority; "but I have another path before me,
and were it otherwise, I could not tread in yours."

"Very true, Master Roland," replied the clown; "and every man knows
his own matters best, and so I will not keep you from the path, as you
say. Give us a grip of your hand, man, for auld lang syne.--What! not
clap palms ere we part?--well, so be it--a wilful man will have his
way, and so farewell, and the blessing of the morning to you."

"Good-morrow--good-morrow," said Roland, hastily; and the clown walked
lightly off, whistling as he went, and glad, apparently, to be rid of
an acquaintance, whose claims might be troublesome, and who had no
longer the means to be serviceable to him.

Roland Graeme compelled himself to walk on while they were within
sight of each other that his former intimate might not augur any
vacillation of purpose, or uncertainty of object, from his remaining
on the same spot; but the effort was a painful one. He seemed stunned,
as it were, and giddy; the earth on which he stood felt as if unsound,
and quaking under his feet like the surface of a bog; and he had once
or twice nearly fallen, though the path he trode was of firm
greensward. He kept resolutely moving forward, in spite of the
internal agitation to which these symptoms belonged, until the distant
form of his acquaintance disappeared behind the slope of a hill, when
his heart failed at once; and, sitting down on the turf, remote from
human ken, he gave way to the natural expressions of wounded pride,
grief, and fear, and wept with unrestrained profusion and unqualified
bitterness.

When the first violent paroxysm of his feelings had subsided, the
deserted and friendless youth felt that mental relief which usually
follows such discharges of sorrow. The tears continued to chase each
other down his cheeks, but they were no longer accompanied by the same
sense of desolation; an afflicting yet milder sentiment was awakened
in his mind, by the recollection of his benefactress, of the unwearied
kindness which had attached her to him, in spite of many acts of
provoking petulance, now recollected as offences of a deep dye, which
had protected him against the machinations of others, as well as
against the consequences of his own folly, and would have continued to
do so, had not the excess of his presumption compelled her to withdraw
her protection.

"Whatever indignity I have borne," he said, "has been the just reward
of my own ingratitude. And have I done well to accept the hospitality,
the more than maternal kindness, of my protectress, yet to detain from
her the knowledge of my religion?--but she shall know that a Catholic
has as much gratitude as a Puritan--that I have been thoughtless, but
not wicked--that in my wildest moments I have loved, respected, and
honoured her--and that the orphan boy might indeed be heedless, but
was never ungrateful!"

He turned, as these thoughts passed through his mind, and began
hastily to retread his footsteps towards the castle. But he checked
the first eagerness of his repentant haste, when he reflected on the
scorn and contempt with which the family were likely to see the return
of the fugitive, humbled, as they must necessarily suppose him, into a
supplicant, who requested pardon for his fault, and permission to
return to his service. He slackened his pace, but he stood not still.

"I care not," he resolutely determined; "let them wink, point, nod,
sneer, speak of the conceit which is humbled, of the pride which has
had a fall--I care not; it is a penance due to my folly, and I will
endure it with patience. But if she also, my benefactress, if she also
should think me sordid and weak-spirited enough to beg, not for her
pardon alone, but for a renewal of the advantages which I derived from
her favour--_her_ suspicion of my meanness I cannot--I will not
brook."

He stood still, and his pride rallying with constitutional obstinacy
against his more just feeling, urged that he would incur the scorn of
the Lady of Avenel, rather than obtain her favour, by following the
course which the first ardour of his repentant feelings had dictated
to him.

"If I had but some plausible pretext," he thought, "some ostensible
reason for my return, some excuse to allege which might show I came
not as a degraded supplicant, or a discarded menial, I might go
thither--but as I am, I cannot--my heart would leap from its place and
burst."

As these thoughts swept through his mind, something passed in the air
so near him as to dazzle his eyes, and almost to brush the plume in
his cap. He looked up--it was the favourite falcon of Sir Halbert,
which, flying around his head, seemed to claim his attention, as that
of a well-known friend. Roland extended his arm, and gave the
accustomed whoop, and the falcon instantly settled on his wrist, and
began to prune itself, glancing at the youth from time to time an
acute and brilliant beam of its hazel eye, which seemed to ask why he
caressed it not with his usual fondness.

"Ah, Diamond!" he said, as if the bird understood him, "thou and I
must be strangers henceforward. Many a gallant stoop have I seen thee
make, and many a brave heron strike down; but that is all gone and
over, and there is no hawking more for me!"

"And why not, Master Roland," said Adam Woodcock the falconer, who
came at that instant from behind a few alder bushes which had
concealed him from view, "why should there be no more hawking for you?
Why, man, what were our life without our sports?--thou know'st the
jolly old song--

  "And rather would Allan in dungeon lie,
  Than live at large where the falcon cannot fly;
  And Allan would rather lie in Sexton's pound,
  Than live where he followed not the merry hawk and hound."

The voice of the falconer was hearty and friendly, and the tone in
which he half-sung half-recited his rude ballad, implied honest
frankness and cordiality. But remembrance of their quarrel, and its
consequences, embarrassed Roland, and prevented his reply. The
falconer saw his hesitation, and guessed the cause.

"What now," said he, "Master Roland? do you, who are half an
Englishman, think that I, who am a whole one, would keep up anger
against you, and you in distress? That were like some of the Scots,
(my master's reverence always excepted,) who can be fair and false,
and wait their time, and keep their mind, as they say, to themselves,
and touch pot and flagon with you, and hunt and hawk with you, and,
after all, when time serves, pay off some old feud with the point of
the dagger. Canny Yorkshire has no memory for such old sores. Why,
man, an you had hit me a rough blow, maybe I would rather have taken
it from you, than a rough word from another; for you have a good
notion of falconry, though you stand up for washing the meat for the
eyases. So give us your hand, man, and bear no malice."

Roland, though he felt his proud blood rebel at the familiarity of
honest Adam's address, could not resist its downright frankness.
Covering his face with the one hand, he held out the other to the
falconer, and returned with readiness his friendly grasp.

"Why, this is hearty now," said Woodcock; "I always said you had a
kind heart, though you have a spice of the devil in your disposition,
that is certain. I came this way with the falcon on purpose to find
you, and yon half-bred lubbard told me which way you took flight. You
ever thought too much of that kestril-kite, Master Roland, and he
knows nought of sport after all, but what he caught from you. I saw
how it had been betwixt you, and I sent him out of my company with a
wanion--I would rather have a rifler on my perch than a false knave at
my elbow--and now, Master Roland, tell me what way wing ye?"

"That is as God pleases," replied the page, with a sigh which he could
not suppress.

"Nay, man, never droop a feather for being cast off," said the
falconer; "who knows but you may soar the better and fairer flight for
all this yet?--Look at Diamond there, 'tis a noble bird, and shows
gallantly with his hood, and bells, and jesses; but there is many a
wild falcon in Norway that would not change properties with him--And
that is what I would say of you. You are no longer my Lady's page, and
you will not clothe so fair, or feed so well, or sleep so soft, or
show so gallant--What of all that? if you are not her page, you are
your own man, and may go where you will, without minding whoop or
whistle. The worst is the loss of the sport, but who knows what you
may come to? They say that Sir Halbert himself, I speak with
reverence, was once glad to be the Abbot's forester, and now he has
hounds and hawks of his own, and Adam Woodcock for a falconer to the
boot."

"You are right, and say well, Adam," answered the youth, the blood
mantling in his cheeks, "the falcon will soar higher without his bells
than with them, though the bells be made of silver."

"That is cheerily spoken," replied the falconer; "and whither now?"

"I thought of going to the Abbey of Kennaquhair," answered Roland
Graeme, "to ask the counsel of Father Ambrose."

"And joy go with you," said the falconer, "though it is likely you may
find the old monks in some sorrow; they say the commons are
threatening to turn them out of their cells, and make a devil's mass
of it in the old church, thinking they have forborne that sport too
long; and troth I am clear of the same opinion."

"Then will Father Ambrose be the better of having a friend beside
him!" said the page, manfully.

"Ay, but, my young fearnought," replied the falconer, "the friend will
scarce be the better of being beside Father Ambrose--he may come by
the redder's lick, and that is ever the worst of the battle."

"I care not for that," said the page, "the dread of a lick should not
hold me back; but I fear I may bring trouble between the brothers by
visiting Father Ambrose. I will tarry to-night at Saint Cuthbert's
cell, where the old priest will give me a night's shelter; and I will
send to Father Ambrose to ask his advice before I go down to the
convent."

"By Our Lady," said the falconer, "and that is a likely plan--and
now," he continued, exchanging his frankness of manner for a sort of
awkward embarrassment, as if he had somewhat to say that he had no
ready means to bring out--"and now, you wot well that I wear a pouch
for my hawk's meat, [Footnote: This same hag, like every thing
belonging to falconry, was esteemed an honourable distinction, and
worn often by the nobility and gentry. One of the Sommervilles of
Camnethan was called _Sir John with the red bag_, because it was
his wont to wear his hawking pouch covered with satin of that colour.]
and so forth; but wot you what it is lined with, Master Roland?"

"With leather, to be sure," replied Roland, somewhat surprised at the
hesitation with which Adam Woodcock asked a question apparently so
simple.

"With leather, lad?" said Woodcock; "ay, and with silver to the boot
of that. See here," he said, showing a secret slit in the lining of
his bag of office--"here they are, thirty good Harry groats as ever
were struck in bluff old Hal's time, and ten of them are right
heartily at your service; and now the murder is out."

Roland's first idea was to refuse his assistance; but he recollected
the vows of humility which he had just taken upon him, and it occurred
that this was the opportunity to put his new-formed resolution to the
test. Assuming a strong command of himself, he answered Adam Woodcock
with as much frankness as his nature permitted him to wear, in doing
what was so contrary to his inclinations, that he accepted thankfully
of his kind offer, while, to soothe his own reviving pride, he could
not help adding, "he hoped soon to requite the obligation."

"That as you list--that as you list, young man," said the falconer,
with glee, counting out and delivering to his young friend the supply
he had so generously offered, and then adding, with great
cheerfulness,--"Now you may go through the world; for he that can back
a horse, wind a horn, hollow a greyhound, fly a hawk, and play at
sword and buckler, with a whole pair of shoes, a green jacket, and ten
lily-white groats in his pouch, may bid Father Care hang himself in
his own jesses. Farewell, and God be with you!"

So saying, and as if desirous to avoid the thanks of his companion, he
turned hastily round, and left Roland Graeme to pursue his journey
alone.




Chapter the Eight.


  The sacred tapers lights are gone.
  Gray moss has clad the altar stone,
  The holy image is o'erthrown,
    The bell has ceased to toll,
  The long ribb'd aisles are burst and shrunk,
  The holy shrines to ruin sunk,
  Departed is the pious monk,
    God's blessing on his soul!
                             REDIVIVA.

The cell of Saint Cuthbert, as it was called, marked, or was supposed
to mark, one of those resting-places, which that venerable saint was
pleased to assign to his monks, when his convent, being driven from
Lindisfern by the Danes, became a peripatetic society of religionists,
and bearing their patron's body on their shoulders, transported him
from place to place through Scotland and the borders of England, until
he was pleased at length to spare them the pain of carrying him
farther, and to choose his ultimate place of rest in the lordly towers
of Durham. The odour of his sanctity remained behind him at each place
where he had granted the monks a transient respite from their labours;
and proud were those who could assign, as his temporary resting-place,
any spot within their vicinity. There were few cells more celebrated
and honoured than that of Saint Cuthbert, to which Roland Graeme now
bent his way, situated considerably to the north-west of the great
Abbey of Kennaquhair, on which it was dependent. In the neighbourhood
were some of those recommendations which weighed with the experienced
priesthood of Rome, in choosing their sites for places of religion.

There was a well, possessed of some medicinal qualities, which, of
course, claimed the saint for its guardian and patron, and
occasionally produced some advantage to the recluse who inhabited his
cell, since none could reasonably expect to benefit by the fountain
who did not extend their bounty to the saint's chaplain. A few rods of
fertile land afforded the monk his plot of garden ground; an eminence
well clothed with trees rose behind the cell, and sheltered it from,
the north and the east, while the front, opening to the south-west,
looked up a wild but pleasant valley, down which wandered a lively
brook, which battled with every stone that interrupted its passage.

The cell itself was rather plainly than rudely constructed--a low
Gothic building with two small apartments, one of which served the
priest for his dwelling-place, the other for his chapel. As there were
few of the secular clergy who durst venture to reside so near the
Border, the assistance of this monk in spiritual affairs had not been
useless to the community, while the Catholic religion retained the
ascendancy; as he could marry, christen, and administer the other
sacraments of the Roman church. Of late, however, as the Protestant
doctrines gained ground, he had found it convenient to live in close
retirement, and to avoid, as much as possible, drawing upon himself
observation or animadversion. The appearance of his habitation,
however, when Roland Graeme came before it in the close of the
evening, plainly showed that his caution had been finally ineffectual.

The page's first movement was to knock at the door, when he observed,
to his surprise, that it was open, not from being left unlatched, but
because, beat off its upper hinge, it was only fastened to the
door-post by the lower, and could therefore no longer perform its
functions. Somewhat alarmed at this, and receiving no answer when he
knocked and called, Roland began to look more at leisure upon the
exterior of the little dwelling before he ventured to enter it. The
flowers, which had been trained with care against the walls, seemed to
have been recently torn down, and trailed their dishonoured garlands
on the earth; the latticed window was broken and dashed in. The
garden, which the monk had maintained by his constant labour in the
highest order and beauty, bore marks of having been lately trod down
and destroyed by the hoofs of animals, and the feet of men.

The sainted spring had not escaped. It was wont to rise beneath a
canopy of ribbed arches, with which the devotion of elder times had
secured and protected its healing waters. These arches were now almost
entirely demolished, and the stones of which they were built were
tumbled into the well, as if for the purpose of choking up and
destroying the fountain, which, as it had shared in other days the
honour of the saint, was, in the present, doomed to partake his
unpopularity. Part of the roof had been pulled down from the house
itself, and an attempt had been made with crows and levers upon one of
the angles, by which several large corner-stones had been forced out
of their place; but the solidity of ancient mason-work had proved too
great for the time or patience of the assailants, and they had
relinquished their task of destruction. Such dilapidated buildings,
after the lapse of years, during which nature has gradually covered
the effects of violence with creeping plants, and with weather-stains,
exhibit, amid their decay, a melancholy beauty. But when the visible
effects of violence appear raw and recent, there is no feeling to
mitigate the sense of devastation with which they impress the
spectators; and such was now the scene on which the youthful page
gazed, with the painful feelings it was qualified to excite.

When his first momentary surprise was over, Roland Graeme was at no
loss to conjecture the cause of these ravages. The destruction of the
Popish edifices did not take place at once throughout Scotland, but at
different times, and according to the spirit which actuated the
reformed clergy; some of whom instigated their hearers to these acts
of demolition, and others, with better taste and feeling, endeavoured
to protect the ancient shrines, while they desired to see them
purified from the objects which had attracted idolatrous devotion.
From time to time, therefore, the populace of the Scottish towns and
villages, when instigated either by their own feelings of abhorrence
for Popish superstition, or by the doctrines of the more zealous
preachers, resumed the work of destruction, and exercised it upon some
sequestered church, chapel, or cell, which had escaped the first burst
of their indignation against the religion of Rome. In many places, the
vices of the Catholic clergy, arising out of the wealth and the
corruption of that tremendous hierarchy, furnished too good an apology
for wreaking vengeance upon the splendid edifices which they
inhabited; and of this an old Scottish historian gives a remarkable
instance.

"Why mourn ye," said an aged matron, seeing the discontent of some of
the citizens, while a stately convent was burnt by the multitude,--
"why mourn ye for its destruction? If you knew half the flagitious
wickedness which has been perpetrated within that house, you would
rather bless the divine judgment, which permits not even the senseless
walls that screened such profligacy, any longer to cumber Christian
ground."

But although, in many instances, the destruction of the Roman Catholic
buildings might be, in the matron's way of judging, an act of justice,
and in others an act of policy, there is no doubt that the humour of
demolishing monuments of ancient piety and munificence, and that in a
poor country like Scotland, where there was no chance of their being
replaced, was both useless, mischievous, and barbarous.

In the present instance, the unpretending and quiet seclusion of the
monk of Saint Cuthbert's had hitherto saved him from the general
wreck; but it would seem ruin had now at length reached him. Anxious
to discover if he had at least escaped personal harm, Roland Graeme
entered the half ruined cell.

The interior of the building was in a state which fully justified the
opinion he had formed from its external injuries. The few rude
utensils of the solitary's hut were broken down, and lay scattered on
the floor, where it seemed as if a fire had been made with some of the
fragments to destroy the rest of his property, and to consume, in
particular, the rude old image of Saint Cuthbert, in its episcopal
habit, which lay on the hearth like Dagon of yore, shattered with the
axe and scorched with the flames, but only partially destroyed. In the
little apartment which served as a chapel, the altar was overthrown,
and the four huge stones of which it had been once composed lay
scattered around the floor. The large stone crucifix which occupied
the niche behind the altar, and fronted the supplicant while he paid
his devotion there, had been pulled down and dashed by its own weight
into three fragments. There were marks of sledge-hammers on each of
these; yet the image had been saved from utter demolition by the size
and strength of the remaining fragments, which, though much injured,
retained enough of the original sculpture to show what it had been
intended to represent.

[Footnote: I may here observe, that this is entirely an ideal scene.
Saint Cuthbert, a person of established sanctity, had, no doubt,
several places of worship on the Borders, where he flourished whilst
living; but Tillmouth Chapel is the only one which bears some
resemblance to the hermitage described in the text. It has, indeed, a
well, famous for gratifying three wishes for every worshipper who
shall quaff the fountain with sufficient belief in its efficacy. At
this spot the Saint is said to have landed in his stone coffin, in
which he sailed down the Tweed from Melrose and here the stone coffin
long lay, in evidence of the fact. The late Sir Francis Blake Delaval
is said to have taken the exact measure of the coffin, and to have
ascertained, by hydrostatic principles, that it might have actually
swum. A profane farmer in the neighborhood announced his intention of
converting this last bed of the Saint into a trough for his swine; but
the profanation was rendered impossible, either by the Saint, or by
some pious votary in his behalf, for on the following morning the
stone sarcophargus was found broken in two fragments.

Tillmouth Chapel, with these points of resemblance, lies, however, in
exactly the opposite direction as regards Melrose, which the supposed
cell of St. Cuthbert is said to have borne towards Kennaquhair.]

Roland Graeme, secretly nursed in the tenets of Rome, saw with horror
the profanation of the most sacred emblem, according to his creed, of
our holy religion.

"It is the badge of our redemption," he said, "which the felons have
dared to violate--would to God my weak strength were able to replace
it--my humble strength, to atone for the sacrilege!"

He stooped to the task he first meditated, and with a sudden, and to
himself almost an incredible exertion of power, he lifted up the one
extremity of the lower shaft of the cross, and rested it upon the edge
of the large stone which served for its pedestal. Encouraged by this
success, he applied his force to the other extremity, and, to his own
astonishment, succeeded so far as to erect the lower end of the limb
into the socket, out of which it had been forced, and to place this
fragment of the image upright.

While he was employed in this labour, or rather at the very moment
when he had accomplished the elevation of the fragment, a voice, in
thrilling and well-known accents, spoke behind him these words:--"Well
done, thou good and faithful servant! Thus would I again meet the
child of my love--the hope of my aged eyes."

Roland turned round in astonishment, and the tall commanding form of
Magdalen Graeme stood beside him. She was arrayed in a sort of loose
habit, in form like that worn by penitents in Catholic countries, but
black in colour, and approaching as near to a pilgrim's cloak as it
was safe to wear in a country where the suspicion of Catholic devotion
in many places endangered the safety of those who were suspected of
attachment to the ancient faith. Roland Graeme threw himself at her
feet. She raised and embraced him, with affection indeed, but not
unmixed with gravity which amounted almost to sternness.

"Thou hast kept well," she said, "the bird in thy bosom. [Footnote:
An expression used by Sir Ralph Percy, slain in the battle of
Hedgly-moor in 1464, when dying, to express his having preserved
unstained his fidelity to the house of Lancaster.] As a boy, as a
youth, thou hast held fast thy faith amongst heretics--thou hast kept
thy secret and mine own amongst thine enemies. I wept when I parted
from you--I who seldom weep, then shed tears, less for thy death than
for thy spiritual danger--I dared not even see thee to bid thee a last
farewell--my grief, my swelling grief, had betrayed me to these
heretics. But thou hast been faithful--down, down on thy knees before
the holy sign, which evil men injure and blaspheme; down, and praise
saints and angels for the grace they have done thee, in preserving
thee from the leprous plague which cleaves to the house in which thou
wert nurtured."

"If, my mother--so I must ever call you" replied Graeme,--"if I am
returned such as thou wouldst wish me, thou must thank the care of the
pious father Ambrose, whose instructions confirmed your early
precepts, and taught me at once to be faithful and to be silent."

"Be he blessed for it," said she; "blessed in the cell and in the
field, in the pulpit and at the altar--the saints rain blessings on
him!--they are just, and employ his pious care to counteract the evils
which his detested brother works against the realm and the
church,--but he knew not of thy lineage?"

"I could not myself tell him that," answered Roland. "I knew but
darkly from your words, that Sir Halbert Glendinning holds mine
inheritance, and that I am of blood as noble as runs in the veins of
any Scottish Baron--these are things not to be forgotten, but for the
explanation I must now look to you."

"And when time suits, thou shalt not look for it in vain. But men say,
my son, that thou art bold and sudden; and those who bear such tempers
are not lightly to be trusted with what will strongly move them."

"Say rather, my mother," returned Roland Graeme, "that I am laggard
and cold-blooded--what patience or endurance can you require of which
_he_ is not capable, who for years has heard his religion
ridiculed and insulted, yet failed to plunge his dagger into the
blasphemer's bosom!"

"Be contented, my child," replied Magdalen Graeme; "the time, which
then and even now demands patience, will soon ripen to that of effort
and action--great events are on the wing, and thou,--thou shalt have
thy share in advancing them. Thou hast relinquished the service of the
Lady of Avenel?"

"I have been dismissed from it, my mother--I have lived to be
dismissed, as if I were the meanest of the train."

"It is the better, my child," replied she; "thy mind will be the more
hardened to undertake that which must be performed."

"Let it be nothing, then, against the Lady of Avenel," said the page,
"as thy look and words seem to imply. I have eaten her bread--I have
experienced her favour--I will neither injure nor betray her."

"Of that hereafter, my son," said she; "but learn this, that it is not
for thee to capitulate in thy duty, and to say this will I do, and
that will I leave undone--No, Roland! God and man will no longer abide
the wickedness of this generation. Seest thou these fragments--
knowest thou what they represent?--and canst thou think it is for thee
to make distinctions amongst a race so accursed by Heaven, that they
renounce, violate, blaspheme, and destroy, whatsoever we are commanded
to believe in, whatsoever we are commanded to reverence?"

As she spoke, she bent her head towards the broken image, with a
countenance in which strong resentment and zeal were mingled with an
expression of ecstatic devotion; she raised her left hand aloft as in
the act of making a vow, and thus proceeded; "Bear witness for me,
blessed symbol of our salvation, bear witness, holy saint, within
whose violated temple we stand, that as it is not for vengeance of my
own that my hate pursues these people, so neither, for any favour or
earthly affection towards any amongst them, will I withdraw my hand
from the plough, when it shall pass through the devoted furrow! Bear
witness, holy saint, once thyself a wanderer and fugitive as we are
now--bear witness, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Heaven--bear witness,
saints and angels!"

In this high train of enthusiasm, she stood, raising her eyes through
the fractured roof of the vault, to the stars which now began to
twinkle through the pale twilight, while the long gray tresses which
hung down over her shoulders waved in the night-breeze, which the
chasm and fractured windows admitted freely.

Roland Graeme was too much awed by early habits, as well as by the
mysterious import of her words, to ask for farther explanation of the
purpose she obscurely hinted at. Nor did she farther press him on the
subject; for, having concluded her prayer or obtestation, by clasping
her hands together with solemnity, and then signing herself with the
cross, she again addressed her grandson, in a tone more adapted to the
ordinary business of life.

"Thou must hence," she said, "Roland, thou must hence, but not till
morning--And now, how wilt thou shift for thy night's quarters?--thou
hast been more softly bred than when we were companions in the misty
hills of Cumberland and Liddesdale."

"I have at least preserved, my good mother, the habits which I then
learned--can lie hard, feed sparingly, and think it no hardship. Since
I was a wanderer with thee on the hills, I have been a hunter, and
fisher, and fowler, and each of these is accustomed to sleep freely in
a worse shelter than sacrilege has left us here."

"Than sacrilege has left us here!" said the matron, repeating his
words, and pausing on them. "Most true, my son; and God's faithful
children are now worst sheltered, when they lodge in God's own house
and the demesne of his blessed saints. We shall sleep cold here, under
the nightwind, which whistles through the breaches which heresy has
made. They shall lie warmer who made them--ay, and through a long
hereafter."

Notwithstanding the wild and singular expression of this female, she
appeared to retain towards Roland Graeme, in a strong degree, that
affectionate and sedulous love which women bear to their nurslings,
and the children dependent on their care. It seemed as if she would
not permit him to do aught for himself which in former days her
attention had been used to do for him, and that she considered the
tall stripling before her as being equally dependent on her careful
attention as when he was the orphan child, who had owed all to her
affectionate solicitude.

"What hast thou to eat now?" she said, as, leaving the chapel, they
went into the deserted habitation of the priest; "or what means of
kindling a fire, to defend thee from this raw and inclement air? Poor
child! thou hast made slight provision for a long journey; nor hast
thou skill to help thyself by wit, when means are scanty. But Our Lady
has placed by thy side one to whom want, in all its forms, is as
familiar as plenty and splendour have formerly been. And with want,
Roland, come the arts of which she is the inventor."

With an active and officious diligence, which strangely contrasted
with her late abstracted and high tone of Catholic devotion, she set
about her domestic arrangements for the evening. A pouch, which was
hidden under her garment, produced a flint arid steel, and from the
scattered fragments around (those pertaining to the image of Saint
Cuthbert scrupulously excepted) she obtained splinters sufficient to
raise a sparkling and cheerful fire on the hearth of the deserted
cell.

"And now," she said, "for needful food."

"Think not of it, mother," said Roland, "unless you yourself feel
hunger. It is a little thing for me to endure a night's abstinence,
and a small atonement for the necessary transgression of the rules of
the Church upon which I was compelled during my stay in the castle."

"Hunger for myself!" answered the matron--"Know, youth, that a mother
knows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied." And with
affectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner,
she added, "Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are
young, and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed
with. Husband your strength, my child,--your sovereign, your religion,
your country, require it. Let age macerate by fast and vigil a body
which can only suffer; let youth, in these active times, nourish the
limbs and the strength which action requires."

While she thus spoke, the scrip, which had produced the means of
striking fire, furnished provision for a meal; of which she herself
scarce partook, but anxiously watched her charge, taking a pleasure,
resembling that of an epicure, in each morsel which he swallowed with
a youthful appetite which abstinence had rendered unusually sharp.
Roland readily obeyed her recommendations, and ate the food which she
so affectionately and earnestly placed before him. But she shook her
head when invited by him in return to partake of the refreshment her
own cares had furnished; and when his solicitude became more pressing,
she refused him in a loftier tone of rejection.

"Young man," she said, "you know not to whom or of what you speak.
They to whom Heaven declares its purpose must merit its communication
by mortifying the senses; they have that within which requires not the
superfluity of earthly nutriment, which is necessary to those who are
without the sphere of the Vision. To them the watch spent in prayer is
a refreshing slumber, and the sense of doing the will of Heaven is a
richer banquet than the tables of monarchs can spread before
them!--But do thou sleep soft, my son," she said, relapsing from the
tone of fanaticism into that of maternal affection and tenderness; "do
thou sleep sound while life is but young with thee, and the cares of
the day can be drowned in the slumbers of the evening. Different is
thy duty and mine, and as different the means by which we must qualify
and strengthen ourselves to perform it. From thee is demanded strength
of body--from me, strength of soul."

When she thus spoke, she prepared with ready address a pallet-couch,
composed partly of the dried leaves which had once furnished a bed to
the solitary, and the guests who occasionally received his
hospitality, and which, neglected by the destroyers of his humble
cell, had remained little disturbed in the corner allotted for them.
To these her care added some of the vestures which lay torn and
scattered on the floor. With a zealous hand she selected all such as
appeared to have made any part of the sacerdotal vestments, laying
them aside as sacred from ordinary purposes, and with the rest she
made, with dexterous promptness, such a bed as a weary man might
willingly stretch himself on; and during the time she was preparing
it, rejected, even with acrimony, any attempt which the youth made to
assist her, or any entreaty which he urged, that she would accept of
the place of rest for her own use. "Sleep thou," said she, "Roland
Graeme, sleep thou--the persecuted, the disinherited orphan--the son
of an ill-fated mother--sleep thou! I go to pray in the chapel beside
thee."

The manner was too enthusiastically earnest, too obstinately firm, to
permit Roland Graeme to dispute her will any farther. Yet he felt some
shame in giving way to it. It seemed as if she had forgotten the years
that had passed away since their parting; and expected to meet, in the
tall, indulged, and wilful youth, whom she had recovered, the passive
obedience of the child whom she had left in the Castle of Avenel. This
did not fail to hurt her grandson's characteristic and constitutional
pride. He obeyed, indeed, awed into submission by the sudden
recurrence of former subordination, and by feelings of affection and
gratitude. Still, however, he felt the yoke.

"Have I relinquished the hawk and the hound," he said, "to become the
pupil of her pleasure, as if I were still a child?--I, whom even my
envious mates allowed to be superior in those exercises which they
took most pains to acquire, and which came to me naturally, as if a
knowledge of them had been my birthright? This may not, and must not
be. I will be no reclaimed sparrow-hawk, who is carried hooded on a
woman's wrist, and has his quarry only shown to him when his eyes are
uncovered for his flight. I will know her purpose ere it is proposed
to me to aid it."

These, and other thoughts, streamed through the mind of Roland Graeme;
and although wearied with the fatigues of the day, it was long ere he
could compose himself to rest.




Chapter the Ninth.


  Kneel with me--swear it--'tis not in words I trust,
  Save when they're fenced with an appeal to Heaven.
                                   OLD PLAY

After passing the night in that sound sleep for which agitation and
fatigue had prepared him, Roland was awakened by the fresh morning
air, and by the beams of the rising sun. His first feeling was that of
surprise; for, instead of looking forth from a turret window on the
Lake of Avenel, which was the prospect his former apartment afforded,
an unlatticed aperture gave him the view of the demolished garden of
the banished anchorite. He sat up on his couch of leaves, and arranged
in his memory, not without wonder, the singular events of the
preceding day, which appeared the more surprising the more he
considered them. He had lost the protectress of his youth, and, in the
same day, he had recovered the guide and guardian of his childhood.
The former deprivation he felt ought to be matter of unceasing regret,
and it seemed as if the latter could hardly be the subject of unmixed
self-congratulation. He remembered this person, who had stood to him
in the relation of a mother, as equally affectionate in her attention,
and absolute in her authority. A singular mixture of love and fear
attended upon his early remembrances as they were connected with her;
and the fear that she might desire to resume the same absolute control
over his motions--a fear which her conduct of yesterday did not tend
much to dissipate--weighed heavily against the joy of this second
meeting.

"She cannot mean," said his rising pride, "to lead and direct me as a
pupil, when I am at the age of judging of my own actions?--this she
cannot mean, or meaning it, will feel herself strangely deceived."

A sense of gratitude towards the person against whom his heart thus
rebelled, checked his course of feeling. He resisted the thoughts
which involuntarily arose in his mind, as he would have resisted an
actual instigation of the foul fiend; and, to aid him in his struggle,
he felt for his beads. But, in his hasty departure from the Castle of
Avenel, he had forgotten and left them behind him.

"This is yet worse," he said; "but two things I learned of her under
the most deadly charge of secrecy--to tell my beads, and to conceal
that I did so; and I have kept my word till now; and when she shall
ask me for the rosary, I must say I have forgotten it! Do I deserve
she should believe me when. I say I have kept the secret of my faith,
when I set so light by its symbol?"

He paced the floor in anxious agitation. In fact, his attachment to
his faith was of a nature very different from that which animated the
enthusiastic matron, but which, notwithstanding, it would have been
his last thought to relinquish.

The early charges impressed on him by his grandmother, had been
instilled into a mind and memory of a character peculiarly tenacious.
Child as he was, he was proud of the confidence reposed in his
discretion, and resolved to show that it had not been rashly intrusted
to him. At the same time, his resolution was no more than that of a
child, and must, necessarily, have gradually faded away under the
operation both of precept and example, during his residence at the
Castle of Avenel, but for the exhortations of Father Ambrose, who, in
his lay estate, had been called Edward Glendinning. This zealous monk
had been apprized, by an unsigned letter placed in his hand by a
pilgrim, that a child educated in the Catholic faith was now in the
Castle of Avenel, perilously situated, (so was the scroll expressed,)
as ever the three children who were cast into the fiery furnace of
persecution. The letter threw upon Father Ambrose the fault, should
this solitary lamb, unwillingly left within the demesnes of the
prowling wolf, become his final prey. There needed no farther
exhortation to the monk than the idea that a soul might be endangered,
and that a Catholic might become an apostate; and he made his visits
more frequent than usual to the castle of Avenel, lest, through want
of the private encouragement and instruction which he always found
some opportunity of dispensing, the church should lose a proselyte,
and, according to the Romish creed, the devil acquire a soul.

Still these interviews were rare; and though they encouraged the
solitary boy to keep his secret and hold fast his religion, they were
neither frequent nor long enough to inspire him with any thing beyond
a blind attachment to the observances which the priest recommended. He
adhered to the forms of his religion rather because he felt it would
be dishonourable to change that of his fathers, than from any rational
conviction or sincere belief of its mysterious doctrines. It was a
principal part of the distinction which, in his own opinion, singled
him out from those with whom he lived, and gave him an additional,
though an internal and concealed reason, for contemning those of the
household who showed an undisguised dislike of him, and for hardening
himself against the instructions of the chaplain, Henry Warden.

"The fanatic preacher," he thought within himself, during some one of
the chaplain's frequent discourses against the Church of Rome, "he
little knows whose ears are receiving his profane doctrine, and with
what contempt and abhorrence they hear his blasphemies against the
holy religion by which kings have been crowned, and for which martyrs
have died!"

But in such proud feelings of defiance of heresy, as it was termed,
and of its professors, which associated the Catholic religion with a
sense of generous independence, and that of the Protestants with the
subjugation of his mind and temper to the direction of Mr. Warden,
began and ended the faith of Roland Graeme, who, independently of the
pride of singularity, sought not to understand, and had no one to
expound to him, the peculiarities of the tenets which he professed.
His regret, therefore, at missing the rosary which had been conveyed
to him through the hands of Father Ambrose, was rather the shame of a
soldier who has dropped his cockade, or badge of service, than that of
a zealous votary who had forgotten a visible symbol of his religion.

His thoughts on the subject, however, were mortifying, and the more so
from apprehension that his negligence must reach the ears of his
relative. He felt it could be no one but her who had secretly
transmitted these beads to Father Ambrose for his use, and that his
carelessness was but an indifferent requital of her kindness.

"Nor will she omit to ask me about them," said he to himself; "for
hers is a zeal which age cannot quell; and if she has not quitted her
wont, my answer will not fail to incense her."

While he thus communed with himself, Magdalen Graeme entered the
apartment. "The blessing of the morning on your youthful head, my
son," she said, with a solemnity of expression which thrilled the
youth to the heart, so sad and earnest did the benediction flow from
her lips, in a tone where devotion was blended with affection. "And
thou hast started thus early from thy couch to catch the first breath
of the dawn? But it is not well, my Roland. Enjoy slumber while thou
canst; the time is not far behind when the waking eye must be thy
portion, as well as mine."

She uttered these words with an affectionate and anxious tone, which
showed, that devotional as were the habitual exercises of her mind,
the thoughts of her nursling yet bound her to earth with the cords of
human affection and passion.

But she abode not long in a mood which she probably regarded as a
momentary dereliction of her imaginary high calling--"Come," she said,
"youth, up and be doing--It is time that we leave this place."

"And whither do we go?" said the young man; "or what is the object
of our journey?"

The matron stepped back, and gazed on him with surprise, not unmingled
with displeasure.

"To what purpose such a question?" she said; "is it not enough that I
lead the way? Hast thou lived with heretics till thou hast learned to
instal the vanity of thine own private judgment in place of due honour
and obedience?"

"The time," thought Roland Graeme within himself, "is already come,
when I must establish my freedom, or be a willing thrall for ever--I
feel that I must speedily look to it."

She instantly fulfilled his foreboding, by recurring to the theme by
which her thoughts seemed most constantly engrossed, although, when
she pleased, no one could so perfectly disguise her religion.

"Thy beads, my son--hast thou told thy beads?"

Roland Graeme coloured high; he felt the storm was approaching, but
scorned to avert it by a falsehood.

"I have forgotten my rosary," he said, "at the Castle of Avenel."

"Forgotten thy rosary!" she exclaimed; "false both to religion and to
natural duty, hast thou lost what was sent so far, and at such risk, a
token of the truest affection, that should have been, every bead of
it, as dear to thee as thine eyeballs?"

"I am grieved it should have so chanced, mother," replied the youth,
"and much did I value the token, as coming from you. For what remains,
I trust to win gold enough, when I push my way in the world; and till
then, beads of black oak, or a rosary of nuts, must serve the turn."

"Hear him!" said his grandmother; "young as he is, he hath learned
already the lessons of the devil's school! The rosary, consecrated by
the Holy Father himself, and sanctified by his blessing, is but a few
knobs of gold, whose value may be replaced by the wages of his profane
labour, and whose virtue may be supplied by a string of
hazel-nuts!--This is heresy--So Henry Warden, the wolf who ravages
the flock of the Shepherd, hath taught thee to speak and to think."