) he
wandered from one chamber to another, through the deserted edifice,
seeking, with boyish eagerness, some source of interest and amusement.
Here he passed through a long gallery, opening on either hand into the
little cells of the nuns, all deserted, and deprived of the few
trifling articles of furniture which the rules of the order admitted.
"The birds are flown," thought the page; "but whether they will find
themselves worse off in the open air than in these damp narrow cages,
I leave my Lady Abbess and my venerable relative to settle betwixt
them. I think the wild young lark whom they have left behind them,
would like best to sing under God's free sky."
A winding stair, strait and narrow, as if to remind the nuns of their
duties of fast and maceration, led down to a lower suite of
apartments, which occupied the ground story of the house. These rooms
were even more ruinous than those which he had left; for, having
encountered the first fury of the assailants by whom the nunnery had
been wasted, the windows had been dashed in, the doors broken down,
and even the partitions betwixt the apartments, in some places,
destroyed. As he thus stalked from desolation to desolation, and began
to think of returning from so uninteresting a research to the chamber
which he had left, he was surprised to hear the low of a cow very
close to him. The sound was so unexpected at the time and place, that
Roland Graeme started as if it had been the voice of a lion, and laid
his hand on his dagger, while at the same moment the light and lovely
form of Catherine Seyton presented itself at the door of the apartment
from which the sound had issued.
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