laboured.

"May I hope," he said, "that were my commission to this--to the Count
Devereux--you would execute it faithfully and with speed? Yet stay: you
have a high mien, as of one above fortune, but your garb is rude and
poor; and if aught of gold could compensate your trouble, the Hermit has
other treasuries besides this cell."

"I will do your bidding, Father, without robbing the poor. You wish,
then, that I should seek Morton Devereux; you wish that I should summon
him hither; you wish to see and to confer with him?"

"God of mercy forbid!" cried the Hermit, and with such a vehemence that
I was startled from the design of revealing myself, which I was on the
point of executing. "I would rather that these walls would crush me
into dust, or that this solid stone would crumble beneath my feet,--ay,
even into a bottomless pit, than meet the glance of Morton Devereux!"

"Is it even so?" said I, stooping over the wine-cup; "ye have been foes
then, I suspect. Well, it matters not: tell me your errand, and it
shall be done."

"Done!" cried the Hermit, and a new and certainly a most natural
suspicion darted within him, "done! and--fool that I am!--who or what
are you that I should believe you take so keen an interest in the wishes
of a man utterly unknown to you? I tell you that my wish is that you
should cross seas and traverse lands until you find the man I have named
to you. Will a stranger do this, and without hire? No--no--I was a
fool, and will trust the monks, and give gold, and then my errand will
be sped."