water, it may be thirty Scots miles before I broke my fast, and have had the red of a bramble rose in my cheek all the while. But will you taste some food, or a cup of distilled waters?'
'I may not,' said Father Eustace, 'being under a vow; but I thank you for your kindness, and pray you to give what I may not accept to the next poor pilgrim who comes hither pale and fainting, for so it shall be the better both with him here, and with you hereafter.'
'By my faith, and I will do so,' said Peter bridge-ward, 'even for thy sake. It is strange now, how this sub-prior gets round one's heart more than the rest of these cowled gentry, that think of nothing but quaffing and stuffing! Wife, I say—wife, we will give a cup of distilled waters and a crust of bread unto the next pilgrim that comes over; and ye may keep for the purpose the grunds of the last greybeard,[1] and the ill-baked bannock which the bairns couldna eat.'
While Peter issued these charitable, and, at the same time, prudent injunctions, the sub-prior, whose mild interference had awakened the bridge-ward to such an act of unwonted generosity, was pacing onward to the monastery. In the way, he had to commune with and subdue his own rebellious heart, an enemy, he was sensible, more formidable than any which the external powers of Satan could place in his way.
Father Eustace had indeed strong temptation to suppress the extraordinary incident which had befallen him. which he was the more reluctant to confess, because he had passed so severe a judgement upon Father Philip, who, as he was not unwilling to allow, had, on his return from Glendearg, encountered obstacles somewhat similar to his own. Of this the sub-prior was the more convinced, when, feeling in his bosom for the book which he had brought off from the Tower of Glendearg, he found it was amissing, which he could only account for by supposing it had been stolen from him during his trance.
'If I confess this strange visitation,' thought the sub-prior, 'I become the ridicule of all my brethren—I whom the Primate sent hither to be a watch, as it were, and
- ↑ An old-fashioned name for an earthen jar for holding spirits.
