put himself in motion, with a sigh much resembling a groan,
and, without appearing exactly connected with the monk's motions, he
followed him into a cloister, and through a postern door, which, after
looking once behind him, the priest left ajar. Behind them followed
Louise, who had hastily assumed her small bundle, and, calling her
little four legged companion, had eagerly followed in the path which
opened an escape from what had shortly before seemed a great and
inevitable danger.

CHAPTER XII.

Then up and spak the auld gudewife,
And wow! but she was grim:
"Had e'er your father done the like,
It had been ill for him."

Lucky Trumbull.

The party were now, by a secret passage, admitted within the church, the
outward doors of which, usually left open, had been closed against
every one in consequence of the recent tumult, when the rioters of both
parties had endeavoured to rush into it for other purposes than those of
devotion. They traversed the gloomy aisles, whose arched roof resounded
to the heavy tread of the armourer, but was silent under the sandalled
foot of the monk, and the light step of poor Louise, who trembled
excessively, as much from fear as cold. She saw that neither her
spiritual nor temporal conductor looked kindly upon her. The former was
an austere man, whose aspect seemed to hold the luckless wanderer in
some degree of horror, as well as contempt; while the latter, though, as
we have seen, one of the best natured men living, was at present grave
to the pitch of sternness, and not a little displeased with having the
part he was playing forced upon him, without, as he was constrained to
feel, a possibility of his declining it.

His dislike at his task extended itself to the innocent object of
his protection, and he internally said to himself, as he surveyed her
scornfully: "A proper queen of beggars to walk the streets of Perth
with, and I a decent burgher! This tawdry minion must have as ragged
a reputation as the rest of her sisterhood, and I am finely sped if
my chivalry in her behalf comes to Catharine's ears. I had better have
slain a man, were he the best in Perth; and, by hammer and nails, I
would have done it on provocation, rather than convoy this baggage
through the city."

Perhaps Louise suspected the cause of her conductor's anxiety, for she
said, timidly and with hesitation: "Worthy sir, were it not better I
should stop one instant in that chapel an