"Sir, thou knowest not the pure sentiment of love that animated me. So refined was my passion for this fair being, that so far from being happy in possessing her, if she loved me not, I would have preferred to see her happiness increased by the love of a rival"——
"Mass! if I understand either this or thee," said the lieutenant of the archers, sipping his Rochelle with a face of perplexity. "But I pray Heaven I may never have reason to argue thus with myself! A blow from my poniard, or a bowshot at fifty paces, were worth a thousand such homilies."
"Oh, yes!" continued Konrad, clasping his hands; "my love, though deep, and passionate, and true, was divested of every sensual thought. I had schooled myself to joy when Anna rejoiced; to sorrow when Anna wept."
"I am no casuist," said Bolton; "but I think thou feedest thy imagination rather than thy love, which must die, as it is hopeless."
"It sought her happiness, not my own—and thus it cannot die."
The young Scottish knight could not perceive this altogether; but he admired Konrad without knowing why, and, to cheer his solitude, introduced to the same prison Sir James Tarbet, the old priest before mentioned, and who had still a few weeks of his term of captivity to endure—a captivity imposed on all who dared to celebrate mass, since it had been forbidden by law as an idolatrous ceremony, dedicated to the devil and scarlet woman.
This good man, who was now in his seventieth year, had served his country in his youth at the fields of Flodden, Solway Moss, and Pinkiecleugh, and, though bent by the infirmities of age and three spear-wounds, somewhat of the old bearing of the knight shone through the mild manner and chastened aspect of the Catholic priest; and in his eye and voice there were those mild and winning expressions, which the followers of Ignatius Loyola are said alone to acquire. His forehead was high, and his failing locks were thin. His magnificent beard, white as snow, lent a dignity to his aspect; and his figure had a stateliness, of which not even his tattered doublet of grey cloth, his hodden mantle, and ruffless shirt, could deprive it. And yet, though changed in aspect, the time had been, when, sheathed in bright armour, he had spurred his barbed horse through the thickest battalions of Surrey and Somerset; and, in the rich vestments of a canon of St. Giles, had held aloft the consecrated host on the great altar of that grand Cathedral, when the sance bell rang, the organ pealed through all its echoing aisles, and while thousands of Edina's best and bravest, her noblest and her greatest, knelt with bent knees and bowed heads on the pavement of the chancel, choir, and nave, before the glittering star of the upheld Eucharist.
By his manner, when bestowing upon him a silent benediction, Eonrad at once recognised a priest of the ancient church, and he kissed the old man's hand with fervour.
"For what art thou here, father?" he asked.
"For worshiping God as he has been worshipped since his son left the earth," replied the old man. "But now Scotland's apostate priests and unlettered barons have discovered, that the forms and prayers of fifteen centuries are idolatrous and superstitious, and severe laws are laid upon us. A gentleman pays a hundred pounds to the crown if he be discovered at mass; a yeoman forty for the first fault, and death for the second."