The monastery; The abbot.

THE MONASTERY. 71
Above all, she could not understand why, since she had acquaintances in
the family, and since the Dame Glendinning had always paid her multure
and knaveship duly, the said lass of the mill had not come in to rest herself
and eat a morsel, and tell her the current news of the water.
These very objections satisfied the monk that his conjectures were right.
Dame," he said, "you must be cautious in what you say. This is an
instance - I would it were the sole one —of the power of the Enemy in
these days. The matter must be sifted with a curious and a careful hand."
"Indeed," said Elspeth, trying to catch and chime in with the ideas of
the Sub-Prior, " I have often thought the miller's folk at the Monastery-mill
were far over careless in sifting our melder, and in bolting it too - some
folk say they will not stick at whiles to put in a handful of ashes amongst
Christian folk's corn-meal."
" That shall be looked after also, dame," said the Sub-Prior, not displeased
to see that the good old woman went off on a false scent; "and now, by
your leave, I will see this lady - do you go before, and prepare her to see
me."
Dame Glendinning left the lower apartment accordingly, which the monk
paced in anxious reflection, considering how he might best discharge, with
humanity as well as with effect, the important duty imposed on him. He
resolved to approach the bedside of the sick person with reprimands, mitigated only by a feeling for her weak condition-he determined, in case of her
reply, to which late examples of hardened heretics might encourage her, to be
prepared with answers to the customary scruples. High fraught, also, with
zeal against her unauthorized intrusion into the priestly function, by study
of the Sacred Scriptures, he imagined to himself the answers which one of
the modern school of heresy might return to him -the victorious refutation
which should lay the disputant prostrate at the Confessor's mercy - and the
healing, yet awful exhortation, which, under pain of refusing the last consolations of religion, he designed to make to the penitent, conjuring her, as
she loved her own soul's welfare, to disclose to him what she knew of the
dark mystery of iniquity, by which heresies were introduced into the most
secluded spots of the very patrimony of the Church herself- what agents
they had who could thus glide, as it were unseen, from place to place, bring
back the volume which the Church had interdicted to the spots from which
it had been removed under her express auspices; and, who, by encouraging
the daring and profane thirst after knowledge forbidden and useless to the
laity, had encouraged the fisher of souls to use with effect his old bait of
ambition and vain-glory.
Much of this premeditated disputation escaped the good father, when
Elspeth returned, her tears flowing faster than her apron could dry them,
and made him a signal to follow her. " How," said the monk, " is she then
so near her end? - nay, the Church must not break or bruise, when comfort
is yet possible;" and forgetting his polemics, the good Sub-Prior hastened
to the little apartment, where, on the wretched bed which she had occupied
since her misfortunes had driven her to the Tower of Glendearg, the widow
of Walter Avenel had rendered up her spirit to her Creator. "My God!"
said the Sub-Prior, " and has my unfortunate dallying suffered her to depart
without the Church's consolation! Look to her, dame," he exclaimed, with
eager impatience; "is there not yet a sparkle of the life left? - may she
not be recalled recalled but for a moment?- Oh! would that she could
express, but by the most imperfect word-but by the most feeble motion,
her acquiescence in the needful task of penitential prayer - Does she not
breathe? - Art thou sure she doth not?"
" She will never breathe more," said the matron. "Oh! the poor fatherless girl -now motherless also -Oh, the kind companion I have had these
many years, whom I shall never see again! But she is in heaven for certain, if ever woman went there; for a woman of better life "