CHAPTER XII.

Then up and spak the auld gudewife,
And wow! but she was grim:
"Had e'er your father done the like,
It had been ill for him."

Lucky Trumbull.


The party were now, by a secret passage, admitted within the church,
the outward doors of which, usually left open, had been closed
against every one in consequence of the recent tumult, when the
rioters of both parties had endeavoured to rush into it for other
purposes than those of devotion. They traversed the gloomy aisles,
whose arched roof resounded to the heavy tread of the armourer,
but was silent under the sandalled foot of the monk, and the light
step of poor Louise, who trembled excessively, as much from fear
as cold. She saw that neither her spiritual nor temporal conductor
looked kindly upon her. The former was an austere man, whose aspect
seemed to hold the luckless wanderer in some degree of horror, as
well as contempt; while the latter, though, as we have seen, one
of the best natured men living, was at present grave to the pitch
of sternness, and not a little displeased with having the part
he was playing forced upon him, without, as he was constrained to
feel, a possibility of his declining it.

His dislike at his task extended itself to the innocent object of
his protection, and he internally said to himself, as he surveyed