"Yea, David," said the Captain; "many a brave fellow found a watery grave that night, and is now lying in pickle off the Isle of May. But let us visit the Father Hermit in his cell; after having a slice of meat and a bicker of wine we shall be better able to arrange our thoughts. And hark! By my soul, what a blast! How the gale rises as the spirits of the air pipe up freak gusts of wind; all at sea must keep sure watch to-night!"
The tempestuous state of the evening prevented the chapel being favoured by any more visitors; and the whole party (including the four attendants of the ladies), making ten persons in all, sat on the stone benches of the Hermit's cell, and by the light of a lamp supped pleasantly enough; though the wind howled through the trees, and moaned in the openings of a burial vault close by, and the boom of the sea resounded on the beach, while the glare of the lightning reddened at times the two narrow slits which served as windows to the recluse's dormitory, and on the coarse glass of which the heavy rain-drops pattered and hissed.
Willie Wad, having nothing else to do (for the ladies' attendants seemed more occupied by the gaily-dressed pages than with him), coiled himself up in a corner, and knowing that he would have to keep the harbour-watch on board to-morrow night, had gone to sleep with that sailor-like facility which defies all discomfort.
The attendants were awed into silence by the reputed holiness of the place; the aspect of the cowled hermit, in his grey Franciscan frock, sitting silent and reserved, as he always did before strangers; and by the grim aspect of the cell, which was all built of bare hewn stone, and darkened by age.
In a recess on one side lay the bed of the recluse; on the other was a rudely sculptured niche, before which projected a little stone font for holy water; within it was a coarse crucifix of black-thorn and a bare skull, well polished by long use; and having inscribed on its blanched bony temples a pious legend.
CHAPTER LIV.
THE WEIRDWOMAN'S TREE.
"I count the man most worthless who would feed
His wavering soul with vain delusive hope;
To live with glory, or with glory die,
Befits the noble."—Sophocles.
The evening was growing into night.
The conversation at Loretto had been maintained in broken and unconnected sentences, or in low whispers; the hermit had retrimmed his lamp, removed the remains of the supper, and composed himself to finish that part of his "office" which yet remained unsaid; and then he told the maids and pages many a wonderful story of the miraculous cures effected at the shrine: how the blind had recovered their sight, the sick their health; how the lame had left their crutches and wooden legs behind them; and how, when an impious boy had cast a stone at the image of Our Lady, blood dropped from her nostrils, to the horror of the beholders, and how that wild little boy died the mitred Abbot of Dunfermline.