"The priest yonder at the castle gave it thee?" said the abbot carelessly.

   "Well, and if he did," replied Dick sharply, "he didna ken I was a-peeping into his chamber, as I've done many an unlucky time here in the abbey, and gotten a good licking for my pains."

   "To whom was it sent?"

   "Ask the bairn yon', that I ha' brought by th' scut o' th' neck. He woudna come bout tugging for."

   "Was he the messenger?" asked Roger, the abbot's secretary and prime agent.

   "Help thine ignorant face, father!—I was peeping about, you see, in the dark. The priest thought it waur the laddy yonder, a-comin' for his bag; so he gied it me, and tou'd me to carry it safe, but forgot to grease my pate forbye wi' the direction. I ken'd ye could read aught at the abbey here, and so ye may e'en run wi' it to the right owner for yere pains."

   The cunning knave glossed over his treachery with this excuse; for he evidently knew better, and had a notion that he should serve his masters by this piece of diplomatic craft.

   "Thou mayest depart, and ere morrow we will give thee a largess for thy dexterity."

   Dick did not care to be long a-snuffing the chill air of the vaults and passages after his dismissal, but in a warm cell near the kitchen fire he was soon wrapped in the delights of oblivion. Such, however, was the importance of the documents he had so

   strangely intercepted, that a messenger was immediately despatched to London with a packet for the Privy Council.

   The same morning, with the early dawn, the abbot and his secretary were together in the cloisters. It was a fitting place and opportunity either for intrigue or devotion, and many a masterstroke of church policy has issued from those dim and sepulchral arches in "the Glen of the deadly Nightshade."

   "Craft is needful, yea laudable," said the abbot, "when we would cope with worldly adversaries, unless we could work miracles for our deliverance. But since in these degenerate ages of the church they have, I fear me, ceased, we must e'en employ the means that Heaven has put into our hands: and if I mistake not, this envoy of ours will be a skilful craftsman for the purpose. Under that garb of silly speech there's a cunning and a wary spirit. Thou didst note well his ready-witted contrivance 

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