“Hoot! if it is such a sighing matter,” he replied, “don’t break your heart to oblige me.”
“Tack care yee dinna brack it, Henry, nor my honest fayther’s nowther,” was Betsy’s answer. Then, mentally she added, “There’s ane ’at must be bracken, and that’s enew.”
At this moment a shadow passed along a moonlit wall beside them, and sunk in a dark archway before them. They soon entered the same archway; proceeded along the flags in front of the great western entrance; mounted some steps; walked on the northern high gravelled terrace, some way; then, leaving it, climbed over graves, and stumbled over tombstones, till, descending a rugged path, among nettles and long grass, they entered a part of the ruin which was without any roof. The walls, however, still rose to their full original height, till the starry sky seemed a canopy that closed them in; while, through a row of long, narrow, well-preserved arches, the moonlight streamed with an adventitious brightness, borrowed from contrast with the dark shadows in every other part. The entrance of our party, however, seemed the signal for all that had been bright to disappear. The moon, which had struggled for some time with the vapours of a hazy night, almost at the instant dropped behind a range of thick clouds near the horizon. She set a few moments after, and the haze thickening to a mizzling rain, the very stars became extinguished. It was slowly, therefore, and with difficulty, that the feet of our wanderers now advanced to the further or eastern end, where the altar is said to have once stood.
Our reverend divine here took a small dark lantern from his breast, unfastened its door, and opened before it a pocket prayer-book. By this time the darkness of all around was total, and added much to the strange effect of the partial gleam that lit up the book, the one hand that held it, and a part only of the one arm, the back of the lantern itself throwing a powerful shadow on the rest of the figure; so that the waving hand seemed a floating vision unconnected with any form, and the voice that arose out of the darkness behind it, almost supernatural! At the moment of its first sound, which, after the silence that had preceded it, seemed to startle every thing, an owl on the top of the ruins screamed. Betsy shuddered: the owl fluttered downwards, fell, as it happened, actually on the lantern, and, striking it out of the hand that held it, extinguished its light; then, having panted a moment at the feet of the astounded group, rose, and screaming again, brushed by their faces. A minute after, its cry was heard repeated, but fainter from the distance, for it now came from the highest point of the steeple.
“It’s no to be, fayther!” said Betsy, in a low voice, “it’s no to be!”
“Hoot!” said Henry, gruffly.
Betsy felt her hand, on the other side, taken in one that seemed to tremble. She thought, at first, it was her father’s; but just then she heard his voice on the far side of Henry, saying to the clergyman, “What’s to be done noo?”
“He kens it off book,” said Henry.
Greyson, who had engaged to swear whatever Henry said, alleged that, while he held the book in his hand, and repeated the words, it was the same thing as if he read them. Accordingly, with particular solemnity of tone, as if to compensate for the want of other requisites, he recommenced the ceremony.