The Sacrifice.
It was in the year of our Lord 1363. The curfew bell had just been rung, the doors of the village houses were all fast shut, and within the castle wall the measured tread of the sentinel on the battlements was the only sound that met the ear. If, perchance, some belated traveller was still abroad, he hung his rosary around his neck, and hurried onward muttering pious ejaculations; for a heavy mist deepened the shades of night, and the sad wailings of the wind and the hootings of the owl mingling together, sounded ominously in his terrified ears.
The only light visible was in the chapel of the monastery, where the monks of the Order of Mercy were reciting their evening prayers. They had just ended the last and solemn petition for "all Christians, captive and suffering in the hands of the infidel," when the bell at the great gate of the holy house rang loudly, and the brother-porter, rising from his knees, hastened to reconnoitre by the wicket who it was demanded admittance at such an unusual hour.
Three persons were at the gate; one, a young man, wore a rich emblazoned coat of arms; his head was uncovered save by the long clustering curls of dark hair, now heavy with the night-damp, that descended to his shoulders; a youth, apparently his page, bore in his arms the knight's helmet. The third individual was an old man, who kept himself in the background, and who appeared by his plain steel cuirass to be an humble squire, grown gray in harness.
The page's youthful face was sad and timid; the elder man's showed the traces of violent passions in the deep lines that furrowed it, and his eyes even now seemed to flash in the light of the torch that the monk carried. The chevalier's noble countenance was pale and grave, and he stood leaning pensively on his sword. "What wish you, Messire?" asked the brother-porter of the knight, when, after a deep but sharp scrutiny, his doubts were removed as to the quality of the strangers.
"May it please the Reverend Father Prior to grant me a short interview?"
"May it be as you desire, Messire. I will seek the reverend Father when you have entered with your followers."
The heavy iron-bound gate of the convent turned on its massive hinges, and closed the instant that the travellers were within.
The golden spurs of the chevalier resounded on the cloister's marble flags as he followed the monk, and he murmured to himself the words of the Psalm, "Haec requies mea in seculum seculi"—but his page and his squire knew no Latin, and his conductor heard him not.
They were introduced into a spacious ancient parlor lined with high black oaken wainscot; the brother placed the torch he carried in an iron claw that was fixed in the wall for that purpose, and invited the strangers to seat themselves on the bench that ran round the chamber, then bowing profoundly, left them.