authority may also impose silence on her father, and on the sacristan. If he is again found to afford room for throwing dishonour on his order, he can be punished with severity, but at the same time with secrecy. For what say the 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,
