"
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 eye 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.
"Ay, 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, mair than he were a through-stane! [Footnote: A
tombstone.] I never kend a Roman, to say kend 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.
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