And the priest devoutly crossed himself, and turned
and louted to the altar.
With that, he spoke a few words more to the soldiers,
and taking Dick by the hand, led him up to the choir,
and placed him in the stall beside his own, where,
for mere decency, the lad had instantly to kneel and
appear to be busy with his devotions.
His mind and his eyes, however, were continually wandering.
Three of the soldiers, he observed, instead of returning
to the house, had got them quietly into a point of
vantage in the aisle; and he could not doubt that
they had done so by Sir Oliver’s command.
Here, then, he was trapped. Here he must spend
the night in the ghostly glimmer and shadow of the
church, and looking on the pale face of him he slew;
and here, in the morning, he must see his sweetheart
married to another man before his eyes.
But, for all that, he obtained a command upon his
mind, and built himself up in patience to await the
issue.
In Shoreby Abbey Church the prayers were kept up all
night without cessation, now with the singing of psalms,
now with a note or two upon the bell.
Rutter, the spy, was nobly waked. There he lay,
meanwhile, as they had arranged him, his dead hands
crossed upon his bosom, his dead eyes staring on the
roof; and hard by, in the stall, the lad who had slain
him waited, in sore disquietude, the coming of the
morning.
Once only, in the course of the hours, Sir Oliver
leaned across to his captive.
“Richard,” he whispered, “my son,
if ye mean me evil, I will certify, on my soul’s
welfare, ye design upon an innocent man. Sinful
in the eye of Heaven I do declare myself; but sinful
as against you I am not, neither have been ever.”
“My father,” returned Dick, in the same
tone of voice, “trust me, I design nothing;
but as for your innocence, I may not forget that ye
cleared yourself but lamely.”
“A man may be innocently guilty,” replied
the priest. “He may be set blindfolded
upon a mission, ignorant of its true scope. So
it was with me. I did decoy your father to his
death; but as Heaven sees us in this sacred place,
I knew not what I did.”
“It may be,” returned Dick. “But
see what a strange web ye have woven, that I should
be, at this hour, at once your prisoner and your judge;
that ye should both threaten my days and deprecate
my anger. Methinks, if ye had been all your
life a true man and good priest, ye would neither
thus fear nor thus detest me. And now to your
prayers. I do obey you, since needs must; but
I will not be burthened with your company.”
The priest uttered a sigh so heavy that it had almost
touched the lad into some sentiment of pity, and he
bowed his head upon his hands like a man borne down
below a weight of care. He joined no longer
in the psalms; but Dick could hear the beads rattle
through his fingers and the prayers a-pattering between
his teeth.
