“I come, lady, from the Lord Prior of Pluscarden,” said Knockando, “and I am the bearer of a message to know, with all due respect and godly greeting, on his part, whether thou art as yet sufficiently restored to be able to undertake a journey to the Priory, that thou mayest give evidence against him who now lieth in a dungeon there, charged with the crime of the most sacrilegious murder of thine uncle, Priest Innes?”
“I beseech thee, sir,” said Helen, much affected, and with a trembling and scarcely audible voice, “I beseech thee to tell the reverend father, that I do, with all humility, abide his command, and that when he shall see fit to demand my presence, I shall be ready to obey.”
“I doubt not that thou art by this time most eager to see vengeance fall speedily upon the foul murderer,” said Knockando.
“Alas! no vengeance can restore him to me whom I have lost,” said Helen, bursting into a flood of tears.
“But his blood crieth out for vengeance, and it lieth with thee to see it done upon the murderer,” said Knockando.
“When the Lord Prior calleth for me, I shall speak the truth, and let vengeance rest with that Almighty Being who alone beheld the cruel deed!” said Helen, throwing her eyes upwards as if secretly appealing to Heaven. “As for me, I can but weep for him that is gone, and pray to have that Christian feeling supplied to me which may enable me to forgive even—to forgive even his murderer.”
“Forgive his murderer!” cried Knockando, with a strange and wild expression. “Canst thou indeed think that thou mayest yet ever be brought to forgive him? But no! no! no!” continued he calmly, and with his usual cold manner and unmoved countenance, “it cannot surely be that thou couldst ever bring thyself to save the monster who could allow one passing word of just reproof to wipe out so many years of kind and hospitable intercourse, and who could revenge it by so barbarous and unheard of a murder.”
“I said forgive, not save,” replied Helen, in a half choked voice. “The laws of God and of man alike require that the murderer should die; and I shall never flinch from the dreadful but imperious duty which now devolves upon me, to see that justice is done upon the guilty person. But our blessed Saviour hath taught me to forgive even him; and ere he be called on to expiate his crime on earth, may the Holy Virgin yield me strength to pray sincerely for his repentance, so that his unhappy soul may be assoilzied from an eternity of torment.”
“What!” cried Knockando, with a recurrence of that wildness of expression which he had already exhibited, “canst thou even contemplate so much as this regarding a wretch, who, lighting down like some nocturnal fiend upon the sacred person of thine uncle, and, reckless of the emblem of Christ which lay upon his bosom”——
“Ha!” exclaimed Helen, suddenly moved as the horrors of the spectacle she had witnessed were thus so rashly and so rudely recalled to her recollection by this ill-timed speech. “What saidst thou?”