and so on to the close of the solemn chaunt,—
"Prostrate, my contrite heart I rend,—
My God, my Father, and my Friend,
Do not forsake me in mine end!
Well may they curse their second birth,
Who rise to everlasting death.
Thou great Creator of mankind,
Oh, let this soul compassion find!"
Amid all that vast assemblage, there was one person who did not seem to join in this hymn. He had lost his bonnet; his head was bare, and his hair, wild, matted, and disordered, waved around his head, and mingled with a beard that seemed to have been untrimmed for a fortnight. He was armed with a long sword, and rode a powerful horse, the blood of which was dripping from a pair of sharp spurs, which appeared to be hurriedly buckled on. The whole multitude were intently regarding the poor being who was about to suffer, otherwise the pale visage, fierce eyes, and wild aspect of this strange horseman must have attracted, in a marked manner, the attention of all who chanced to observe him.
He was Roland Vipont, who, with a heart full of fury, and a head full of desperate thoughts, had posted himself as near the pile as the spearmen of Sir Andrew Preston would permit.
Love and wrath, together with wounded pride, had excited his great inborn courage to a point of rashness and bravery that made him feel strong as a Hercules, bold as a lion, and fitted to encounter, without a shadow of fear or qualm of doubt, Sir Andrew of Gourtoun's fifty lances in a general mêlée.
Slowly and impressively the chapel bells of the Greyfriars, and of St. Mary in the Portsburgh, began to toll a knell for the passing soul, and the heads of the people bent lower.
"Blessed Lord," Roland heard the voice of the prebend praying; "oh, King of Glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the flames of hell, and from the deep pit."
Jane's pale lips seemed to move as she made a response.
"Deliver them from the lion's mouth, lest hell swallow them, and lest they fall into darkness.
"Let the standard-bearer, Saint Michael, bring them unto the holy light which of old thou didst promise to Abraham and to his posterity."