hunger, shivering with cold, pining in solitude
and darkness, Sir Torquil would have
surrendered house and land, in addition to
his usurped territory, to have the curse
lifted from his head; but Sir Reinhold
persevered in preferring the soul's health of his
patron to the mere satisfying of his bodily
wants. And at length, shrieking for food,
and staggering through hall and corridor,
and finding no one to comfort him, he sat
down in his arm-chair by the side of the
empty grate, and in the morning was found
dead,—a striking example of the
punishment that invariably pursues the unjust
appropriators of the wealth of the church. His
will was found and duly proved. It left all
he had to Sir Reinhold, now Sir Reinhold of
the Speith, who had saved his life on several
occasions, and had been his friend and
supporter to the last. It left him the guardianship
of his daughter Sibylla, and the disposal
of her hand in marriage,—a hand which, as
it carried with it the possession of the Black
Scawr Tower and a whole county of barren
land, he instantly bestowed upon himself.
No sooner legally clothed in Sir Torquil's
rights than he prosecuted that conscientious
individual's claims to the Grange with such
skill, that a peppercorn compromise was
again had recourse to, and the memory of
Sir Torquil cleansed by a solemn retractation
of all demoniacal possession and a withdrawal
of the penalty of excommunication. Sir
Reinhold of the Scawr was now the professed
patron and defender of the abbey of
Strathwoden, and in a few years had established
rights of ownership over more than half of
the much coveted lands. Fiercer and fiercer
in the meantime grew the religious troubles
in Scotland. There were Lords of the Articles
and Lords of the Congregation; but all
anxious for the spoil of the Romish Church.
As long as Sir Reinhold was paid with broad
acres for his defence of that failing cause, he
was the most zealous votary of the faith. His
belief in bones of martyrs and thumb-nails of
saints knew no bounds, except the fences of
the rich fields still belonging to the monks;
but when matters grew worse and worse, and
civil government entirely died out, and
ecclesiastical factions carried on an internecine
war, a sudden light of reformation shone in
on the darkened eyes of the papistical Sir
Reinhold. He became a Lord of the
Congregation, snuffled through the nose as if he
laboured under a perpetual cold, and, with
many allusions to Amalekites and smitings
on hip and thigh, he seized all the remaining
territories of his neighbour the Abbot of
Strathwoden, and enclosed that jolly
ecclesiastic and his now greatly depleted monks
within the narrowest limits. There was
nothing left to them of all their gorgeous
estates but a narrow strip round the Abbey
itself,—not enough for their maintenance, but
quite enough to excite the cupidity of so
zealous a Protestant as Sir Reinhold of the
Scawr. Many of the brethren had died; the
abbot was old and feeble; the peasantry had
been draughted off into the armed companies
required to support Sir Reinhold's importance,
and at leisure hours had started as
freebooters and robbers on their own account.

It was at this period we introduced Sir
Reinhold to our readers. The night was
dark, the wind blew, the river roared, as we
said at the beginning of this tale; and Sir
Reinhold sat in his great old hall absorbed in
thought.

"It is so much pleasanter a situation," he
said, "than this gruesome tower;—a fruitful
orchard at the west, instead of the scrubby
planting here,—a soft-flowing, clean-watered
stream on the north, instead of this wild,
noisy Naddersferry below the Scawr,—and
when the lazy, mumbling shavelings are all
driven out—by this time they ought to be in
the middle of the river—"

A louder blast than usual shook the
window-frame, as he spoke, and a sharp shower
of sleet sounded on the panes.

"It's lucky," he said, " their reverences are
so fat and well-fed, they will stand the
weather better than the thin sides of a poor
trooper like myself."

The door now gently opened.

"Well," said Sir Reinhold, " what news of
the holy monks? Have you turned them
out of house and home? What! you, my
lady wife? I thought I spoke to John of the
Strong Arm. Why so late up? to bed, to
bed!"

"Not till you revoke the cruel order and
replace the good priests in their own walls."

"Good priests, forsooth! who made you a
judge of goodness? Lazy lurdans, sworn
servants of the Man of Sin, soldiers of
Antichrist, and holders of ground I want."

"The last the greatest of their sins, I know
full well. Oh! man of blood and violence,
have you no relentings in that iron heart?
Have you no hour vouchsafed you by pitying
saints, to turn your thoughts to penitence and
fear?"

"No! Of what should I repent? of what
should I be afraid?"

"Look, Sir Reinhold of the Scawr, on this
wasted form; look, Sir Reinhold, on these
haggard features. Have I repined? have I
complained? have I let the world know
that cruelties, and crimes, and basenesses
innumerable have marked your life for the
twenty years of our union?"

"'Twere safer not now to begin," said Sir
Reinhold, with compressed lips and knitted
brow.

"I bore all—neglect, contumely, indignities,
and even violence of your hand. For who
am I that I should complain when greater
evils than these are heaped on holy church?
What I have suffered I have deserved, for
who is free from sin? But for others I will
speak. You shall not drive out the holy