stranger requested us to go before, assuring us that he would follow in a few minutes.
I fancy that old Mattocks suspected these few minutes might be employed in effecting further discoveries amongst the tombs, for he glided back through a side-aisle to watch the Benedictine's motions, but presently returned, and told me in a whisper that 'the gentleman was on his knees amang the cauld stanes, praying like ony saunt.'
I stole back, and beheld the old man actually employed as Mattocks had informed me. The language seemed to be Latin; and as the whispered yet solemn accent glided away through the ruined aisles, I could not help reflecting how long it was since they had heard the forms of that religion, for the exercise of which they had been reared at such cost of time, taste, labour, and expense. 'Come away, come away,' said I; 'let us leave him to himself, Mattocks; this is no business of ours.'
'My certes, no, Captain,' said Mattocks; 'ne'ertheless, it winna be amiss to keep an ee on him. My father, rest his saul, was a horse-couper, and used to say he never was cheated in a naig in his life, saving by a west-country whig frae Kilmarnock, that said a grace ower a dram o' whisky. But this gentleman will be a Roman, I'se warrant?'
'You are perfectly right in that, Saunders,' said I.
'Aye, I have seen twa or three of their priests that were chased ower here some score o' years syne. They just danced like mad when they looked on the friars' heads, and the nuns' heads, in the cloister yonder; they took to them like auld acquaintance like. Od, he is not stirring yet, inair than he were a through-stane![1] I never kenn'd a Roman, to say kenn'd him, but ane—mair by token, he was the only ane in the town to ken—and that was auld Jock of the Pend. It wad hae been lang ere ye fand Jock praying in the abbey in a thick night, wi' his knees on a cauld stane. Jock likit a kirk wi' a chimley in't. Mony a merry ploy I hae had wi' him down at the inn yonder; and when he died, decently I wad hae earded him; but, or I gat his grave weel howkit, some of the quality, that were o' his ain unhappy persuasion, had the corpse whirried away up the water, and buried him after their a'n pleasure,
- ↑ A tombstone.
