ing of what I owe to you, my dearest mother-show me how my blood can testify my gratitude, and you shall judge if I spare it. But blindfold obedience has in it as little merit as reason."

"Saints and angels !" replied Magdalen, "and do I hear these words from the child of my hopes, the nursling by whose bed I have kneeled, and for whose weal I have wearied every saint in heaven with prayers? Roland, by obedience only canst thou show thy affection and thy gratitude. What avails it that you might perchance adopt the course I propose to thee, were it to be fully explained? Thou wouldst not then follow my command, but thine own judgment; thou wouldst not do the will of Heaven, communicated through thy best friend, to whom thou owest thine all; but thou wouldst observe the blinded dictates of thine own imperfect reason. Hear me, Roland ! a lot calls thee-solicits thee-demands thee the proudest to which man can be destined, and it uses the voice of thine earliest, thy best, thine only friend-Wilt thou resist it? Then go thy way-leave me here my hopes on earth are gone and withered-I will kneel me down before yonder profaned altar, and when the raging heretics return, they shall dye it with the blood of a martyr!"

"But, my dearest mother," said Roland Græme, whose early recollections of her violence were formidably renewed by these wild expressions of reckless passion, "I will not forsake you-I will abide with you-worlds shall not force me from your side-I will protect—I will defend you-I' will live with you, and die for you!"

"One word, my son, were worth all these say only I will obey you.'

وو

"Doubt it not, mother," replied the youth, "I will, and that with all my heart; only"

Nay, I receive no qualifications of thy promise," said Magdalen Græme, catching at the word, "the obedience which I require is absolute; and a blessing on thee, thou darling memory of my beloved child, that thou hast power to make a promise so hard to human pride! Trust

me well, that in the design in which thou dost embark, thou hast for thy partners the mighty and the valiant, the power of the church, and the pride of the noble. Succeed or fail, live or die, thy name shall be among those with whom success or failure is alike glorious, death or life alike desirable. Forward, then, forward! life is short, and our plan is laborious-Angels, saints, and the whole blessed host of Heaven, have their eyes even now on this barren and blighted land of Scotland-What say I? on Scotland ?-their eye is on us, Roland-on the frail woman, on the inexperienced youth, who, amidst the ruins which sacrilege hath made in the holy place, devote themselves to God's cause, and that of their lawful Sovereign. Amen, so be it! The blessed eyes of saints and martyrs, which see our resolve, shall witness the execution; or their ears, which hear our vow, shall hear our death-groan drawn in the sacred cause!"

While thus speaking, she held Roland Græme firmly with one hand, while she pointed upward with the other, to leave him, as it were, no means of protest against the obtestation to which he was thus made a party. When she had finished her appeal to Heaven, she left him no leisure for farther hesitation, or for asking any explanation of her purpose; but passing with the same ready transition as formerly, to the solicitous attentions of an anxious parent, overwhelmed him with questions concerning his residence in the Castle of Avenel, and the qualities and accomplishments he had acquired.

"It is well," she said, when she had exhausted her inquiries, "my gay göss-hawk hath been well trained, and will soar high; but those who bred him will have cause to fear as well as to wonder at his flight. Let us now,' she said, "to our morning meal, and care not though it be a scanty one. A few hours walk will bring us to more friendly quarters."

They broke their fast accordingly, on such fragments as remained of their yesterday's provision, and immediately set out on their farther journey. Magdalen Græme fed the way, with a firm and active step much beyond

ed for his flight. I will know her purpose' ere it is proposed to me to aid it."

These, and other thoughts, streamed through the mind of Roland Græme; and although wearied with the fatigues of the day, it was long ere he could compose himself to rest.

CHAPTER IX.

Kneel with me-swear it-'tis not in words I trust,
Save when they're fenced with an appeal to Heaven.

Old Play

AFTER passing the night in that sound sleep for which agitation and fatigue had prepared him, Roland was awakened by the fresh morning air, and by the beams of the rising sun. His first feeling was that of surprise; for, instead of looking forth from a turret window on the waters of the Lake of Avenel, which was the prospect his former apartment afforded, an unlatticed aperture gave him the view of the demolished garden of the banished anchorite. He sat up on his couch of leaves, and arranged in his memory, not without wonder, the singular events of the preceding day, which appeared the more surprising the more he considered them. He had lost the protectress of his youth, and in the same day, he had recovered the guide and guardian of his childhood. The former deprivation he felt ought to be matter of unceasing regret, and it seemed as if the latter could hardly be the subject of unmixed self-congratulation. He remembered this person who had stood to him in the relation of a mother, as equally affectionate in her attention, and absolute in her authority. A singular mixture of love and fear attended upon his early remembrances as they were connected with her; and the fear that she might desire to resume the same absolute

control over his motions-a fear which her conduct of yesterday did not tend much to dissipate, weighed heavily against the joy of this second meeting.

She cannot mean, said his rising pride, to lead and direct me as a pupil, when I am at the age of judging of my own actions ?-this she cannot mean, or, meaning it, will feel herself strangely deceived.

A sense of gratitude towards the person against whom his heart thus rebelled, checked this course of feeling. He resisted the thoughts which involuntarily arose in his mind, as he would have resisted an actual instigation of the foul fiend; and, to aid him in his struggle, he felt for his beads. But, in his hasty departure from the Castle of Avenel, he had forgotten and left them behind him.

This is yet worse, he said; but two things I learned of her under the most deadly charge of secrecy-to tell my beads, and to conceal that I did so; and I have kept my word till now, and when she shall ask me for the rosary, I must say I have forgotten it! Do I deserve she should believe me when I say I have kept the secret of my faith, when I set so light by its symbol?

He paced the floor in anxious agitation. In fact, his attachment to his faith was of a nature very different from that which animated the enthusiastic matron, but which, notwithstanding, it would have been his last thought to relinquish.

The early charges impressed on him by his grandmother, had been instilled into a mind and memory of a character peculiarly tenacious. Child as he was, he was proud of the confidence reposed in his discretion, and resolved to show that it had not been rashly intrusted to him. At the same time, his resolution was no more than that of a child, and must, necessarily, have gradually faded away under the operation both of precept and example, during his residence at the Castle of Avenel, but for the exhortations of Father Ambrose, who, in his lay estate, had been called Edward Glendinning. This zealous monk had been apprized, by an unsigned letter plac

her years, and Roland Græme followed, pensive and anxious, and far from satisfied with the state of dependence to which he seemed again to be reduced.

"Am I forever," he said to himself, "to be devoured with the desire of independence and free agency, and yet to be forever led on, by circumstances, to follow the will of others ?"

CHAPTER X.

She dwelt unnoticed and alone,
Beside the springs of Dove ;

A maid whom there was none to praise,
And very few to love.

Wordsworth.

In the course of their journey, the travellers spoke little to each other. Magdalen Græme chanted from time to time, in a low voice, a part of some one of those beautiful old Latin hymns which belong to the Catholic service, muttered an Ave or a Credo, and so passed on, lost in devotional contemplation. The meditations of her grandson were more bent on mundane matters; and many a time, as a moor-fowl arose from the heath, and shot along the moor, uttering his bold crow of defiance, he thought of the jolly Adam Woodcock, and his trusty goss-hawk; or, as they passed a thicket where the low trees and bushes were intermingled with tall fern, furze, and broom, so as to form a thick and intricate cover, his dreams were of a roebuck, and a brace of gaze-bounds. But frequently his mind returned to the benevolent and kind mistress whom he had left behind him, offended justly, and unreconciled by any effort of his.

My step would be lighter, he thought, and so would my heart, could I but have returned to see her for one instant, and to say, Lady, the orphan-boy was wild, bu not ungrateful!