hat the abbess
conjured me to avert a dreadful fate by a speedy retreat into the
cloister, and that the monk pledged his word that you should not be
molested if I complied."

"The foul fiend take them both for weeping crocodiles!" said the glover.

"Alas!" replied Catharine, "complaint or anger will little help us; but
you see I have had real cause for this present alarm."

"Alarm! call it utter ruin. Alas! my reckless child, where was your
prudence when you ran headlong into such a snare?"

"Hear me, father," said Catharine; "there is still one mode of safety
held out: it is one which I have often proposed, and for which I have in
vain supplicated your permission."

"I understand you--the convent," said her father. "But, Catharine, what
abbess or prioress would dare--"

"That I will explain to you, father, and it will also show the
circumstances which have made me seem unsteady of resolution to a
degree which has brought censure upon me from yourself and others. Our
confessor, old Father Francis, whom I chose from the Dominican convent
at your command--"

"Ay, truly," interrupted the glover; "and I so counselled and commanded
thee, in order to take off the report that thy conscience was altogether
under the direction of Father Clement."

"Well, this Father Francis has at different times urged and provoked me
to converse on such matters as he judged I was likely to learn something
of from the Carthusian preacher. Heaven forgive me my blindness! I fell
into the snare, spoke freely, and, as he argued gently, as one who would
fain be convinced, I even spoke warmly in defence of what I believed
devoutly. The confessor assumed not his real aspect and betrayed not his
secret purpose until he had learned all that I had to tell him. It was
then that he threatened me with temporal punishment and with eternal
condemnation. Had his threats reached me alone, I could have stood firm;
for their cruelty on earth I could have endured, and their power beyond
this life I have no belief in."

"For Heaven's sake!" said the glover, who was well nigh beside himself
at perceiving at every new word the increasing extremity of his
daughter's danger, "beware of blaspheming the Holy Church, whose arms
are as prompt to strike as her ears are sharp to hear."

"To me," said the Maid of Perth, again looking up, "the terrors of the
threatened denunciations would have been of little avail; but when they
spoke of involving thee, my father, i