placed for the purpose of rendering the posture of reverential
devotion as uneasy as possible. He read many prayers of the
Catholic Church, and chanted, in a low but earnest voice, three
of the penitential psalms. These last he intermixed with sighs,
and tears, and convulsive throbs, which bore witness how deeply
he felt the divine poetry which he recited. The Scottish knight
assisted with profound sincerity at these acts of devotion, his
opinion of his host beginning, in the meantime, to be so much
changed, that he doubted whether, from the severity of his
penance and the ardour of his prayers, he ought not to regard him
as a saint; and when they arose from the ground, he stood with
reverence before him, as a pupil before an honoured master. The
hermit was, on his side, silent and abstracted for the space of a
few minutes.

"Look into yonder recess, my son," he said, pointing to the
farther corner of the cell; "there thou wilt find a veil--bring
it hither."

The knight obeyed, and in a small aperture cut out of the wall,
and secured with a door of wicker, he found the veil inquired
for. When he brought it to the light, he discovered that it was
torn, and soiled in some places with some dark substance. The
anchorite looked at it with a deep but smothered emotion, and ere
he could speak to the Scottish knight, was compelled to vent his
feelings in a convulsive groan.

"Thou art now about to look upon the richest treasure that the
earth possesses," he at length said; "woe is me, that my eyes are
unworthy to be lifted towards it! Alas! I am but the vile and