"Blessed be Heaven that spared her——"
"To life and you," interrupted the good old priest, pressing his hand.
Claude Hamilton was about to speak, when the vicar resumed hurriedly, while lifting up his withered hands,—
"Alas, sirs! of a verity this hath been a black Saturday for Scotland!"
"And our monks, with their grey frocks and white banner," added Claude Hamilton bitterly; "what availed its solemn consecration, amid incense and Latin, in the abbey of Dunfermline? By the Black Rood of Scotland! I saw them lying round it as thick as leaves in autumn, in their shaven crowns and black armour; and small mercy those heretics of England gave them!"
"Our church, which my friend in youth, Dunbar the poet likens to a ship—the holy bark of St. Peter—tossing on a tempestuous sea of Lollardy, will yet ride out the storm; and on the next field where we meet these heretical English, foot to foot and hand to hand, God will make Himself manifest, and defend the right."
"I hope so. Heaven taking all the monks to itself, however, seems a sorry commencement. But I begin to put more faith in stout men-at-arms than in miracles, and more faith in a hackbut than a homily."
"Yet thy kinswoman hath been restored to thee hale and sound," said the vicar reproachfully.
"True, Father John; and for that good deed will I hang in your church a lamp of silver, that shall light its altar till the day of doom, in memory of my gratitude and devotion."
"But tell me of the field—this fatal, gory field,—and how it went," said the politic priest; "and meanwhile let us leave the young laird to make some reparation to the young countess for the sore evil his mother wrought her; so come this way with me, and I will show you how the fires of these destroyers redden all the sky to the westward."