Chapter 10

Here we stand--
Woundless and well, may Heaven's high name be bless'd for't!
As erst, ere treason couch'd a lance against us.
Decker.

No sooner was the Sub-Prior hurried into the refectory by his
rejoicing companions, than the first person on whom he fixed his eye
proved to be Christie of the Clinthill. He was seated in the
chimney-corner, fettered and guarded, his features drawn into that air
of sulky and turbid resolution with which those hardened in guilt are
accustomed to view the approach of punishment. But as the Sub-Prior
drew near to him, his face assumed a more wild and startled
expression, while he exclaimed--"The devil! the devil himself, brings
the dead back upon the living."

"Nay," said a monk to him, "say rather that Our Lady foils the
attempts of the wicked on her faithful servants--our dear brother
lives and moves."

"Lives and moves!" said the ruffian, rising and shuffling towards the
Sub-Prior as well as his chains would permit; "nay, then, I will never
trust ashen shaft and steel point more--It is even so," he added, as he
gazed on the Sub-Prior with astonishment; "neither wem nor wound--not
as much as a rent in his frock!"

"And whence should my wound have come?" said Father Eustace.

"From the good lance that never failed me before," replied Christie of
the Clinthill.

"Heaven absolve thee for thy purpose!" said the Sub-Prior; "wouldst
thou have slain a servant of the altar?"

"To choose!" answered Christie; "the Fifemen say, an the whole pack
of ye were slain, there were more lost at Flodden."

"Villain! art thou heretic as well as murderer?"

"Not I, by Saint Giles," replied the rider; "I listened blithely
enough to the Laird of Monance, when he told me ye were all cheats and
knaves; but when he would have had me go hear one Wiseheart, a
gospeller as they call him, he might as well have persuaded the wild
colt that had flung one rider to kneel down and help another into the
saddle."

"There is some goodness about him yet," said the Sacristan to the Abbot,
who at that moment entered--"He refused to hear a heretic preacher."

"The better for him in the next world," answered the Abbot. "Prepare
for death, my son,--we deliver thee over to the secular arm of our
bailie, for execution on the Gallow-hill by peep of light."

"Amen!" said the ruffian; "'tis the end I must have come by sooner or
later--and what care I whether I feed the crows at Saint Mary's or at
Carlisle?"

"Let me implore your reverend