The monastery; The abbot.

814 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
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 upcn 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.* 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 farewellmy 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 Ialbert 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 Grame, " 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 Grame; "the time, which
then and even now demands patience, will soon ripen to that of effort and
An expression used by Sir Ralph Percy, slain in the battle of Hedgly-moor in 1464, %'en dying, tc UlreMia having preserved unstained.iB fidelity to the house of Lanoastor