Andrew McFarland Davis - "Indian Games"

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New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

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NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Monastery

S >> Sir Walter Scott >> The Monastery




"It is soon told," said the Sub-Prior; "nor do I wish to disguise it,
if it can avail you in your defence. This maiden, Mary Avenel,
apprehending that you nourished malice against her foster-brother
under a friendly brow, did advisedly send up the old man, Martin
Tacket, to follow your footsteps and to prevent mischief. But it seems
that your evil passions had outrun precaution: for when he came to the
spot, guided by your footsteps upon the dew, he found but the bloody
turf and the new covered grave; and after long and vain search through
the wilds after Halbert and yourself, he brought back the sorrowful
news to her who had sent him."

"Saw he not my doublet, I pray you?" said Sir Piercie; "for when I
came to myself, I found that I was wrapped in my cloak, but without my
under garment as your reverence may observe."

So saying, he opened his cloak, forgetting, with his characteristical
inconsistency, that he showed his shirt stained with blood.

"How! cruel man," said the monk, when he observed this confirmation of
his suspicions; "wilt thou deny the guilt, even while thou bearest on
thy person the blood thou hast shed?--Wilt thou longer deny that thy
rash hand has robbed a mother of a son, our community of a vassal, the
Queen of Scotland of a liege subject? and what canst thou expect, but
that, at the least, we deliver thee up to England, as undeserving our
farther protection?"

"By the Saints!" said the knight, now driven to extremity, "if this
blood be the witness against me, it is but rebel blood, since this
morning at sunrise it flowed within my own veins."

"How were that possible, Sir Piercie Shafton," said the monk, "since I
see no wound from whence it can have flowed?"

"That," said the knight, "is the most mysterious part of the transaction
--See here!"

So saying, he undid his shirt collar, and, opening his bosom, showed
the spot through--which Halbert's sword had passed, but already
cicatrized, and bearing the appearance of a wound lately healed.

"This exhausts my patience, Sir Knight," said the Sub-Prior, "and is
adding insult to violence and injury. Do you hold me for a child or an
idiot, that you pretend to make me believe that the fresh blood with
which your shirt is stained, flowed from a wound which has been healed
for weeks or months? Unhappy mocker, thinkest thou thus to blind us?
Too well do we know that it is the blood of your victim, wrestling
with you in the desperate and mortal struggle, which has thus dyed
your apparel."

The knight, after a moment's recollection, said in reply, "I will be
open with you, my father--bid these men stand out of ear-shot, and I
will tell you all I know of this mysterious business; and muse not,
good father, though it may pass thy wit to expound it, for I avouch to
you it is too dark for mine own."

The monk commanded Edward and the two men to withdraw, assuring the
former that his conference with the prisoner should be brief, and
giving him permission to keep watch at the door of the apartment;
without which allowance he might, perhaps, have had some difficulty in
procuring his absence. Edward had no sooner left the chamber, than he
despatched messengers to one or two families of the Halidome, with
whose sons his brother and he sometimes associated, to tell them that
Halbert Glendinning had been murdered by an Englishman, and to require
them to repair to the Tower of Glendearg without delay. The duty of
revenge in such cases was held so sacred, that he had no reason to
doubt they would instantly come with such assistance as would ensure
the detention of the prisoner. He then locked the doors of the tower,
both inner and outer, and also the gate of the court-yard. Having
taken these precautions, he made a hasty visit to the females of the
family, exhausting himself in efforts to console them, and in
protestations that he would have vengeance for his murdered brother.




Chapter the Twenty-Seventh.


Now, by Our Lady, Sheriff,'tis hard reckoning,
That I, with every odds of birth and barony
Should be detain'd here for the casual death
Of a wild forester, whose utmost having
Is but the brazen buckle of the belt
In which he sticks his hedge-knife.
OLD PLAY.

While Edward was making preparations for securing and punishing the
supposed murderer of his brother, with an intense thirst for
vengeance, which had not hitherto shown itself as part of his
character, Sir Piercie Shafton made such communications as it pleased
him to the Sub-Prior, who listened with great attention, though the
knight's narrative was none of the clearest, especially as his
self-conceit led him to conceal or abridge the details which were
necessary to render it intelligible.

"You are to know," he said, "reverend father, that this rustical
juvenal having chosen to offer me, in the presence of your venerable
Superior, yourself, and other excellent and worthy persons, besides
the damsel, Mary Avenel, whom I term my Discretion in all honour and
kindness, a gross insult, rendered yet more intolerable by the time
and place, my just resentment did so gain the mastery over my
discretion, that I resolved to allow him the privileges of an equal,
and to indulge him with the combat."

"But, Sir Knight," said the Sub-Prior, "you still leave two matters
very obscure. First, why the token he presented to you gave you so
much offence, as I with others witnessed; and then again, how the
youth, whom you then met for the first, or, at least, the second time,
knew so much of your history as enabled him so greatly to move you."

The knight coloured very deeply.

"For your first query," he said, "most reverend father, we will, if
you please, pretermit it as nothing essential to the matter in hand;
and for the second--I protest to you that I know as little of his
means of knowledge as you do, and that I am well-nigh persuaded he
deals with Sathanas, of which more anon.--Well, sir--In the evening, I
failed not to veil my purpose with a pleasant brow, as is the custom
amongst us martialists, who never display the bloody colours of
defiance in our countenance until our hand is armed to fight under
them. I amused the fair Discretion with some canzonettes, and other
toys, which could not but be ravishing to her inexperienced ears. I
arose in the morning, and met my antagonist, who, to say truth, for an
inexperienced villagio, comported himself as stoutly as I could have
desired.--So, coming to the encounter, reverend sir, I did try his
mettle with some half-a-dozen of downright passes, with any one of
which I could have been through his body, only that I was loth to take
so fatal an advantage, but rather, mixing mercy with my just
indignation, studied to inflict upon him some flesh-wound of no very
fatal quality. But, sir, in the midst of my clemency, he, being
instigated, I think, by the devil, did follow up his first offence
with some insult of the same nature. Whereupon, being eager to punish
him, I made an estramazone, and my foot slipping at the same
time,--not from any fault of fence on my part, or any advantage of
skill on his, but the devil having, as I said, taken up the matter in
hand, and the grass being slippery,--ere I recovered my position I
encountered his sword, which he had advanced, with my undefended
person, so that, as I think, I was in some sort run through the body.
My juvenal, being beyond measure appalled at his own unexpected and
unmerited success in this strange encounter, takes the flight and
leaves me there, and I fall into a dead swoon for the lack of the
blood I had lost so foolishly--and when I awake, as from a sound
sleep, I find myself lying, an it like you, wrapt up in my cloak at
the foot of one of the birch-trees which stand together in a clump
near to this place. I feel my limbs, and experience little pain, but
much weakness--I put my hand to the wound--it was whole and skinned
over as you now see it--I rise and come hither; and in these words you
have my whole day's story."

"I can only reply to so strange a tale," answered the monk, "that it
is scarce possible that Sir Piercie Shafton can expect me to credit
it. Here is a quarrel, the cause of which you conceal--a wound
received in the morning, of which there is no recent appearance at
sunset,--a grave filled up, in which no body is deposited--the
vanquished found alive and well--the victor departed no man knows
whither. These things, Sir Knight, hang not so well together, that I
should receive them as gospel."

"Reverend father," answered Sir Piercie Shafton, "I pray you in the
first place to observe, that if I offer peaceful and civil
justification of that which I have already averred to be true, I do so
only in devout deference to your dress and to your order, protesting,
that to any other opposite, saving a man of religion, a lady or my
liege prince, I would not deign to support that which I had once
attested, otherwise than with the point of my good sword. And so much
being premised, I have to add, that I can but gage my honour as a
gentleman, and my faith as a Catholic Christian, that the things which
I have described to you have happened to me as I have described them,
and not otherwise."

"It is a deep assertion, Sir Knight," answered the Sub-Prior; "yet,
bethink you, it is only an assertion, and that no reason can be
alleged why things should be believed which are so contrary to reason.
Let me pray you to say whether the grave, which has been seen at your
place of combat, was open or closed when your encounter took place?"

"Reverend father," said the knight, "I will veil from you nothing, but
show you each secret of my bosom; even as the pure fountain revealeth
the smallest pebble which graces the sand at the bottom of its crystal
mirror, and as--"

"Speak in plain terms, for the love of heaven!" said the monk; "these
holiday phrases belong not to solemn affairs--Was the grave open when
the conflict began?"

"It was," answered the knight, "I acknowledge it; even as he that
acknowledgeth--"

"Nay, I pray you, fair son, forbear these similitudes, and observe me.
On yesterday at even no grave was found in that place, for old Martin
chanced, contrary to his wont, to go thither in quest of a strayed
sheep. At break of day, by your own confession, a grave was opened in
that spot, and there a combat was fought--only one of the combatants
appears, and he is covered with blood, and to all appearance
woundless."--Here the knight made a gesture of impatience.--"Nay, fair
son, hear me but one moment--the grave is closed and covered by the
sod--what can we believe, but that it conceals the bloody corpse of
the fallen duellist?"

"By Heaven, it cannot!" said the knight, "unless the juvenal hath
slain himself and buried himself, in order to place me in the
predicament of his murderer."

"The grave shall doubtless be explored, and that by to-morrow's dawn,"
said the monk, "I will see it done with mine own eyes"

"But," said the prisoner, "I protest against all evidence which may
arise from its contents, and do insist beforehand, that whatever may
be found in that grave shall not prejudice me in my defence. I have
been so haunted by diabolical deceptions in this matter, that what do
I know but that the devil may assume the form of this rustical
juvenal, in order to procure me farther vexation?--I protest to you,
holy father, it is my very thought that there is witchcraft in all
that hath befallen me. Since I entered into this northern land, in
which men say that sorceries do abound, I, who am held in awe and
regard even by the prime gallants in the court of Feliciana, have been
here bearded and taunted by a clod-treading clown. I, whom Vincentio
Saviola termed his nimblest and most agile disciple, was, to speak
briefly, foiled by a cow-boy, who knew no more of fence than is used
at every country wake. I am run, as it seemed to me, through the body,
with a very sufficient stoccata, and faint on the spot; and yet, when
I recover, I find myself without either wem or wound, and, lacking
nothing of my apparel, saving my murrey-coloured doublet, slashed with
satin, which I will pray may be inquired after, lest the devil, who
transported me, should have dropped it in his passage among some of
the trees or bushes--it being a choice and most fanciful piece of
raiment, which I wore for the first time at the Queen's pageant in
Southwark."

"Sir Knight," said the monk, "you do again go astray from this matter.
I inquire of you respecting that which concerns the life of another
man, and it may be, touches your own also, and you answer me with the
tale of an old doublet!"

"Old!" exclaimed the knight; "now, by the gods and saints, if there be
a gallant at the British Court more fancifully considerate, and more
considerately fanciful, but quaintly curious, and more curiously
quaint, in frequent changes of all rich articles of vesture, becoming
one who may be accounted point-de-vice a courtier, I will give you
leave to term me a slave and a liar."

The monk thought, but did not say, that he had already acquired right
to doubt the veracity of the Euphuist, considering the marvellous tale
which he had told. Yet his own strange adventure, and that of Father
Philip, rushed on his mind, and forbade his coming to any conclusion.
He contented himself, therefore, with observing, that these were
certainly strange incidents, and requested to know if Sir Piercie
Shafton had any other reason for suspecting himself to be in a manner
so particularly selected for the sport of sorcery and witchcraft.

"Sir Sub-Prior," said the Euphuist, "the most extraordinary
circumstance remains behind, which alone, had I neither been bearded
in dispute, nor foiled in combat, nor wounded and cured in the space
of a few hours, would nevertheless of itself, and without any other
corroborative, have compelled me to believe myself the subject of some
malevolent fascination. Reverend sir, it is not to your ears that men
should tell tales of love and gallantry, nor is Sir Piercie Shafton
one who, to any ears whatsoever, is wont to boast of his fair
acceptance with the choice and prime beauties of the court; insomuch
that a lady, none of the least resplendent constellations which
revolve in that hemisphere of honour, pleasure, and beauty, but whose
name I here pretermit, was wont to call me her Taciturnity.
Nevertheless truth must be spoken; and I cannot but allow, as the
general report of the court, allowed in camps, and echoed back by city
and country, that in the alacrity of the accost, the tender delicacy
of the regard, the facetiousness of the address, the adopting and
pursuing of the fancy, the solemn close and the graceful fall-off,
Piercie Shafton was accounted the only gallant of the time, and so
well accepted among the choicer beauties of the age, that no
silk-hosed reveller of the presence-chamber, or plumed jouster of the
tilt-yard, approached him by a bow's length in the ladies' regard,
being the mark at which every well-born and generous juvenal aimeth
his shaft. Nevertheless, reverend sir, having found in this rude
place something which by blood and birth might be termed a lady, and
being desirous to keep my gallant humour in exercise, as well as to
show my sworn devotion to the sex in general, I did shoot off some
arrows of compliment at this Mary Avenel, terming her my Discretion,
with other quaint and well-imagined courtesies, rather bestowed out of
my bounty than warranted by her merit, or perchance like unto the
boyish fowler, who, rather than not exercise his bird-piece, will
shoot at crows or magpies for lack of better game----"

"Mary Avenel is much obliged by your notice," answered the monk; "but
to what does all this detail of past and present gallantry conduct
us?"

"Marry, to this conclusion," answered the knight; "that either this my
Discretion, or I myself, am little less than bewitched; for, instead
of receiving my accost with a gratifying bow, answering my regard with
a suppressed smile, accompanying my falling off or departure with a
slight sigh--honours with which I protest to you the noblest dancers
and proudest beauties in Feliciana have graced my poor services--she
hath paid me as little and as cold regard as if I had been some
hob-nailed clown of these bleak mountains! Nay, this very day, while I
was in the act of kneeling at her feet to render her the succours of
this pungent quintessence, of purest spirit distilled by the fairest
hands of the court of Feliciana, she pushed me from her with looks
which savoured of repugnance, and, as I think, thrust at me with her
foot as if to spurn me from her presence. These things, reverend
father, are strange, portentous, unnatural, and befall not in the
current of mortal affairs, but are symptomatic of sorcery and
fascination. So that, having given to your reverence a perfect,
simple, and plain account of all that I know concerning this matter, I
leave it to your wisdom to solve what may be found soluble in the
same, it being my purpose to-morrow, with the peep of dawn, to set
forward towards Edinburgh."

"I grieve to be an interruption to your designs, Sir Knight," said the
monk, "but that purpose of thine may hardly be fulfilled."

"How, reverend father!" said the knight, with an air of the utmost
surprise; "if what you say respects my departure, understand that it
_must_ be, for I have so resolved it."

"Sir Knight," reiterated the Sub-Prior, "I must once more repeat, this
_cannot_ be, until the Abbot's pleasure be known in the matter."

"Reverend sir," said the knight, drawing himself up with great
dignity, "I desire my hearty and thankful commendations to the Abbot;
but in this matter I have nothing to do with his reverend pleasure,
designing only to consult my own."

"Pardon me," said the Sub-Prior; "the Lord Abbot hath in this matter
a voice potential."

Sir Piercie Shafton's colour began to rise--"I marvel," he said, "to
hear your reverence talk thus--What! will you, for the imagined death
of a rude, low-born frampler and wrangler, venture to impinge upon the
liberty of the kinsman of the house of Piercie?"

"Sir Knight," returned the Sub-Prior, civilly, "your high lineage and
your kindling anger will avail you nothing in this matter--You shall
not come here to seek a shelter, and then spill our blood as if it
were water."

"I tell you," said the knight, "once more, as I have told you already,
that there was no blood spilled but mine own!"

"That remains to be proved," replied the Sub-Prior; "we of the
community of Saint Mary's of Kennaquhair, use not to take fairy tales in
exchange for the lives of our liege vassals."

"We of the house of Piercie," answered Shafton, "brook neither threats
nor restraint--I say I will travel to-morrow, happen what may!"

"And I," answered the Sub-Prior, in the same tone of determination,
"say that I will break your journey, come what may!"

"Who shall gainsay me," said the knight, "if I make my way by force?"

"You will judge wisely to think ere you make such an attempt," answered
the monk, with composure; "there are men enough in the Halidome to
vindicate its rights over those who dare infringe them."

"My cousin of Northumberland will know how to revenge this usage to
a beloved kinsman so near to his blood," said the Englishman.

"The Lord Abbot will know how to protect the rights of his territory,
both with, the temporal and spiritual sword," said the monk. "Besides,
consider, were we to send you to your kinsman at Alnwick or Warkworth
to-morrow, he dare do nothing but transmit you in fetters to the Queen
of England. Bethink, Sir Knight, that you stand on slippery ground,
and will act most wisely in reconciling yourself to be a prisoner in
this place until the Abbot shall decide the matter. There are armed
men enow to countervail all your efforts at escape. Let patience and
resignation, therefore, arm you to a necessary submission."

So saying, he clapped his hands, and called aloud. Edward entered,
accompanied by two young men who had already joined him, and were well
armed.

"Edward," said the Sub-Prior, "you will supply the English Knight here
in this spence with suitable food and accommodation for the night,
treating him with as much kindness as if nothing had happened between
you. But you will place a sufficient guard, and look carefully that he
make not his escape. Should he attempt to break forth, resist him to
the death; but in no other case harm a hair of his head, as you shall
be answerable."

Edward Glendinning replied,--"That I may obey your commands, reverend
sir, I will not again offer myself to this person's presence; for
shame it were to me to break the peace of the Halidome, but not less
shame to leave my brother's death unavenged."

As he spoke, his lips grew livid, the blood forsook his cheek, and he
was about to leave the apartment, when the Sub-Prior recalled him and
said in a solemn tone,--"Edward, I have known you from infancy--I have
done what lay within my reach to be of use to you--I say nothing of
what you owe to me as the representative of your spiritual Superior--I
say nothing of the duty from the vassal to the Sub-Prior--But Father
Eustace expects from the pupil whom he has nurtured--he expects from
Edward Glendinning, that he will not by any deed of sudden violence,
however justified in his own mind by the provocation, break through
the respect due to public justice, or that which he has an especial
right to claim from him."

"Fear nothing, my reverend father, for so in an hundred senses may I
well term you," said the young man; "fear not, I would say, that I
will in any thing diminish the respect I owe to the venerable
community by whom we have so long been protected, far less that I will
do aught which can be personally less than respectful to you. But the
blood of my brother must not cry for vengeance in vain--your reverence
knows our Border creed."

"'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will requite it,'" answered
the monk. "The heathenish custom of deadly feud which prevails in this
land, through which each man seeks vengeance at his own hand when the
death of a friend or kinsman has chanced, hath already deluged our
vales with the blood of Scottish men, spilled by the hands of
countrymen and kindred. It were endless to count up the fatal results.
On the Eastern Border, the Homes are at feud with the Swintons and
Cockburns; in our Middle Marches, the Scotts and Kerrs have spilled as
much brave blood in domestic feud as might have fought a pitched field
in England, could they have but forgiven and forgotten a casual
rencounter that placed their names in opposition to each other. On the
west frontier, the Johnstones are at war with the Maxwells, the
Jardines with the Bells, drawing with them the flower of the country,
which should place their breasts as a bulwark against England, into
private and bloody warfare, of which it is the only end to waste and
impair the forces of the country, already divided in itself. Do not,
my dear son Edward, permit this bloody prejudice to master your mind.
I cannot ask you to think of the crime supposed as if the blood
spilled had been less dear to you--Alas! I know that is impossible.
But I do require you, in proportion to your interest in the supposed
sufferer, (for as yet the whole is matter of supposition,) to bear on
your mind the evidence on which the guilt of the accused person must
be tried. He hath spoken with me, and I confess his tale is so
extraordinary, that I should have, without a moment's hesitation,
rejected it as incredible, but that an affair which chanced to myself
in this very glen--More of that another time--Suffice it for the
present to say, that from what I have myself experienced, I deem it
possible, that, extraordinary as Sir Piercie Shafton's story may seem,
I hold it not utterly impossible."

"Father," said Edward Glendinning, when he saw that his preceptor
paused, unwilling farther to explain upon what grounds he was inclined
to give a certain degree of credit to Sir Piercie Shafton's story,
while he admitted it as improbable--"Father to me you have been in
every sense. You know that my hand grasped more readily to the book
than to the sword; and that I lacked utterly the ready and bold spirit
which distinguished----" Here his voice faltered, and he paused for a
moment, and then went on with resolution and rapidity--"I would say,
that I was unequal to Halbert in promptitude of heart and of hand; but
Halbert is gone, and I stand his representative, and that of my
father--his successor in all his rights," (while he said this his eyes
shot fire,) "and bound to assert and maintain them as he would have
done--therefore I am a changed man, increased in courage as in my
rights and pretensions. And, reverend father, respectfully, but
plainly and firmly do I say, his blood, if it has been shed by this
man, shall be atoned--Halbert shall not sleep neglected in his lonely
grave, as if with him the spirit of my father had ceased forever. His
blood flows in my veins, and while his has been poured forth
unrequited, mine will permit me no rest. My poverty and meanness of
rank shall not avail the lordly murderer. My calm nature and peaceful
studies shall not be his protection. Even the obligations, holy
father, which I acknowledge to you, shall not be his protection. I
wait with patience the judgment of the Abbot and Chapter, for the
slaughter of one of their most anciently descended vassals. If they do
right to my brother's memory, it is well. But mark me, father, if they
shall fail in rendering me that justice, I bear a heart and a hand
which, though I love not such extremities, are capable of remedying
such an error. He who takes up my brother's succession must avenge
his death."