Roland Graeme was too much awed by early habits, as well as by the
mysterious import of her words, to ask for farther explanation of the
purpose she obscurely hinted at. Nor did she farther press him on the
subject; for, having concluded her prayer or obtestation, by clasping
her hands together with solemnity, and then signing herself with the
cross, she again addressed her grandson, in a tone more adapted to the
ordinary business of life.
"Thou must hence," she said, "Roland, thou must hence, but not till
morning--And now, how wilt thou shift for thy night's quarters?--thou
hast been more softly bred than when we were companions in the misty
hills of Cumberland and Liddesdale."
"I have at least preserved, my good mother, the habits which I then
learned--can lie hard, feed sparingly, and think it no hardship. Since
I was a wanderer with thee on the hills, I have been a hunter, and
fisher, and fowler, and each of these is accustomed to sleep freely in
a worse shelter than sacrilege has left us here."
"Than sacrilege has left us here!" said the matron, repeating his
words, and pausing on them. "Most true, my son; and God's faithful
children are now worst sheltered, when they lodge in God's own house
and the demesne of his blessed saints. We shall sleep cold here, under
the nightwind, which whistles through the breaches which heresy has
made. They shall lie warmer who made them--ay, and through a long
hereafter."
Notwithstanding the wild and singular expression of this female, she
appeared to retain towards Roland Graeme, in a strong degree, that
affectionate and sedulous love which women bear to their nurslings,
and the children dependent on their care.
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