"It overlooks the garden above an arbour."
"Be within the arbour when this church bell strikes twelve; keep your horses in the street, and I myself, as far as an old man may, will aid your flight together. You will pass through the church by the postern, and then God speed ye to the sea! Till then, farewell, and my blessing on ye! Ah, well-a-day! all this toil, all this trouble, all this peril had been saved us, if—if——"
"What, my Lord?"
"The master of evil and of mischief had been but forgiven and restored to his place—but the time shall come," said the abbot, remembering his pet crotchet, as they hastily separated; "that blessed time shall come!"
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A WEDDING NIGHT.
"Their swords smote blunt upon our steel,
And keen upon our buff;
The coldest blooded man of us
Had battering enough;
'Twas butt to butt, and point to point,
And eager pike to pike;
'Twas foin and parry, give and take,
As long as we could strike."
Gray seemed to tread on air—he felt as one in a dream—but a dream to be realized—as he hurried through the streets of Bommel to his hostelry, to pack his mail (a portmanteau), to order his horse to be in readiness, and to procure one for Murielle; while his emotions of love for her, and gratitude to the abbot, left no room in his honest heart for exultation that he was about to outwit his enemies, and by bearing her away avenge the wrongs they had done him.
While he is busy with the hosteller, his grooms, horses, and arrangements, let us return to one who was quite as busily taking measures to circumvent them—the inevitable Achanna.
In less than half an hour after his disappearance from the church, he was closeted with the earl, who had just risen from his knees, having been on a prie-dieu at prayer before a crucifix and case containing some crumbs of the bones of St. Bryde—the chief palladium of the house of Douglas.
"What tidings now," said he, "for thou art always abroad in the night, like an owl or a rascally kirkyard bat? Miserere mei Deus!" he added, concluding his orisons.