The monastery; The abbot.

66 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
Decretals! Facinora ostendi dum punientur, flagitia autem abscondi
debent."
A sentence of Latin, as Eustace had before observed, had often much influence on the Abbot, because he understood it not fluently, and was ashamed
to acknowledge his ignorance. On these terms they parted for the night.
The next day, Abbot Boniface strictly interrogated Philip on the real
cause of his disaster of the previous night. But the Sacristan stood firm to
his story; nor was he found to vary from any point of it, although the
answers he returned were in some degree incoherent, owing to his intermingling with them ever and anon snatches of the strange damsel's song,
which had made such deep impression on his imagination, that he could not
prevent himself from imitating it repeatedly in the course of his examination. The Abbot had compassion with the Sacristan's involuntary frailty,
to which something supernatural seemed annexed, and finally became of
opinion, that Father Eustace's more natural explanation was rather plausible
than just. And, indeed, although we have recorded the adventure as we
find it written down, we cannot forbear to add that there was a schism on
the subject in the convent, and that several of the brethren pretended to
have good reason for thinking that the miller's black-eyed daughter was at
the bottom of the affair after all. Whichever way it might be interpreted,
all agreed that it had too ludicrous a sound to be permitted to get abroad,
and therefore the Sacristan was charged, on his vow of obedience, to say no
more of his ducking; an injunction which, having once eased his mind by
telling his story, it may be well conjectured that he joyfully obeyed.
The attention of Father Eustace was much less forcibly arrested by the
marvellous tale of the Sacristan's danger, and his escape, than by the mention of the volume which he had brought with him from the Tower of Glendearg. A copy of the Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, had
found its way even into the proper territory of the church, and had been
discovered in one of the most hidden and sequestered recesses of the Halidome of Saint Mary's.
He anxiously requested to see the volume. In this the Sacristan was
unable to gratify him, for he had lost it, as far as he recollected, when the
supernatural being, as he conceived her to be, took her departure from him.
Father Eustace went down to the spot in person, and searched all around
it, in hopes of recovering the volume in question; but his labour was in
vain. He returned to the Abbot, and reported that it must have fallen into
the river or the mill-stream; "for I will hardly believe," he said, "that
Father Philip's musical friend would fly off with a copy of the Holy Scriptures."
"Being," said the Abbot, "as it is, an heretical translation, it may be
thought that Satan may have power over it."
" Ay!" said Father Eustace, " it is indeed his chiefest magazine of artil.
lery, when he inspireth presumptuous and daring men to set forth their own
opinions and expositions of Holy Writ. But though thus abused, the Scriptures are the source of our salvation, and are no more to be reckoned unholy, because of these rash men's proceedings, than a powerful medicine is
to be contemned, or held poisonous, because bold and evil leeches have
employed it to the prejudice of their patients. With the permission of
your reverence, I would that this matter were looked into more closely. I
will myself visit the Tower of Glendearg ere I am many hours older, and
we shall see if any spectre or white woman of the wild will venture to interrupt my journey or return. Have I your reverend permission and your
blessing?" he added, but in a tone that appeared to set no great store by
either.
" Thou hast both, my brother," said the Abbot; but no sooner had Eustace left the apartment, than Boniface could not help breaking on the
willing ear of the Sacristan his sincere wish, that any spirit, black, white,