and scattered their beautiful petals at her feet.




CHAPTER IX.


The hour of vespers had come and passed; the organ and choir had hushed
their solemn sounds. The abbot and his attendant monks, the king who,
with his train, had that evening joined the solemn service, all had
departed, and but two inmates were left within the abbey church of
Scone. Darkness and silence had assumed their undisturbed dominion, for
the waxen tapers left burning on the altar lighted but a few yards
round, leaving the nave and cloisters in impenetrable gloom. Some twenty
or thirty yards east of the altar, elevated some paces from the ground,
in its light and graceful shrine, stood an elegantly sculptured figure
of the Virgin and Child. A silver lamp, whose pure flame was fed with
aromatic incense, burned within the shrine and shed its soft light on a
suit of glittering armor which was hanging on the shaft of a pillar
close beside it. Directly behind the altar was a large oriel window of
stained glass, representing subjects from Scripture. The window, with
its various mullions and lights, formed one high pointed arch, marked by
solid stone pillars on each side, the capitals of which traced the
commencement of the arch. Another window, similar in character, though
somewhat smaller in dimensions, lighted the west end of the church; and
near it stood another shrine containing a figure of St. Stephen, lighted
as was that of the Virgin and Child, and, like that, gleaming on a suit
of armor, and on the figure of the youthful candidate for knighthood,
whose task was to pass that night in prayer and vigil beside his armor,