Were he himself the son
of a belted earl, he could not better be trained to arms, and all that
befits a gentleman, than by the instructions and discipline of Sir
Halbert Glendinning."
"Ay," answered the old woman, in the same style of bitter irony, "I
know the wages of that service;--a curse when the corslet is not
sufficiently brightened,--a blow when the girth is not tightly
drawn,--to be beaten because the hounds are at fault,--to be reviled
because the foray is unsuccessful,--to stain his hands for the
master's bidding in the blood alike of beast and of man,--to be a
butcher of harmless deer, a murderer and defacer of God's own image,
not at his own pleasure, but at that of his lord,--to live a brawling
ruffian, and a common stabber--exposed to heat, to cold, to want of
food, to all the privations of an anchoret, not for the love of God,
but for the service of Satan,--to die by the gibbet, or in some
obscure skirmish,--to sleep out his brief life in carnal security, and
to awake in the eternal fire, which is never quenched."
"Nay," said the Lady of Avenel, "but to such unhallowed course of life
your grandson will not be here exposed. My husband is just and kind to
those who live under his banner; and you yourself well know, that
youth have here a strict as well as a good preceptor in the person of
our chaplain."
The old woman appeared to pause.
"You have named," she said, "the only circumstance which can move me.
I must soon onward, the vision has said it--I must not tarry in the
same spot--I must on,--I must on, it is my weird.
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