THE WARD OF THE PRIORESS. A LEGEND OF CATESBY. Chapter I.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 93, 6 February 1875, Page 13

THE WARD OF THE PRIORESS. A LEGEND OF CATESBY. Chapter I.

THE BELATED TRAVELLER. It was a dark and bitter winter night ! A night in the January of an unusually severe winter. There had been a hard frost for three weeks, and the ground was like iron. Nowhere had the inclemency of the season been more painfully felt then in the always bleak country of Northamptonshire. It was about eight o'clock in the evening, the curfew bell had rung out, when a solitary traveller, who had lost bis way, drew his bridle, and looked around anxiously for shelter. The hard black frost had seemed to give away about noon, and the sky was overspread with clouds; but a shrill and bitter wind howled over the face of the country; and when those clouds descended, it was not in genial rain, but a heavy fall of snow. The traveller had purposed to rest that-night at the little town of Daventry, but he had been detained at Northampton, and evening began to fall, and the snow with it, soon after he was clear of the little country town. The traveller was not acquainted with the neighborhood, and even had he been so, the customary road marks were speedily obliterated by the snow. . * * He had crossed a wild moor with danger and difficulty for the snow was only drifting into the hollows, but covered the hard ground to more than a foot already ; and it was no slight increase oi peril that it would also overspread the frozen surface of the pools and streams so common to the country, but which were not, itwas probable, frozen so thick that the ice would bear a horse and its Well might the traveller look around anxiously as he dismounted, for to continue his journey was at the risk of his life. did™* mool< WhiCh he had ' ÜBt crossed ' was a stri P of Leafless as they were, the thick branches might afford some shelter, however slight and indifferent. Beyond this, there was the chance that some one of the larger trees, which were of meat SSk "* furnish a really secure Bhelter "* its h ° Uow It was in vain tliat the eyes of the traveller, aching and half, blinded with the snow, sought through the eddying drift for the cheerful rays of a lamp, in some cottage, or that, through the wateTdo^ hstened **<& strained ear for the bark of some There swas no resource but to adventure into the wood. This the traveller did on foot, leading his horse by the bridle. tx, t? T as dense than he supposed— and a double row of beeches, the broad limbs of which, linked together from either side, made a canopy, throxigh the interstices of which the snow had drifted so lightly that our wayfarer discovered that there was a beaten track below. This avenue crossed the wood diagonally, and was so palpably an avenue m the contrivance of which, art must have assisted nature, that the benighted man pressed on with renewed hope, confidently expecting that the stately colonnade of beeches had some human habitation in proximity. In this expectation, he was not disappointed. After proceeding for about a quarter of a mile the path widened, the trees were more sparsely scattered, and presently the wayfarer emerged upon a wide lawn-like space, at the upper end of which through the rents which the wind made in the veil of snow which hung pendant between earth and sky, he perceived the walk of what seemed a dwelling of some pretension. The ground was now smooth and level, and over the the thick carpet of the snow the traveller led his wearied steed He was, however surprised as he proceeded that along the - iSht appeared no twinkling ray of The building he was approaching seemed scarcely a ruin, but assuredly there was about no signs of human habitation The mystery was explained when the traveller stumbled over a gate which lay on the ground, in the interstices of which had grown up tall thistles, which shook the snow from their rank heads i as they bent in the firce blast. «c»uh *• few I fe . et *?**"*> and tlie traveller stumbled a°uin. Thia frSn its 3 °cd S estS ™* ° aUSed ** & whidh had ** en th *°™ The head was knocked off, but a figure of an infant was in the sculptured arms ; and the tmveller-a devout CathoUc-im! MS^SS d6d that the mutilated **« had W tha^f «, A ll c£7e £7 B si t *? ke fl ™ the bosom of the wayfarer as, dimly through the white glare of the snow, he perceived yawning/ thj bkek avch of a dismantled doorway. »*uug, wi« * a «? ! xr he exclail J ie i' " I ruind me somewhere in thia district atood the Nunnery of Catesby, so cruelly suppressed by our vile king -some three .years since. Oh, beneficent Lord, look thou with a piting eye on the afflictions of the children of thy Church in this unhappy land ! , As the traveller ceased speaking, and sadly leaning on the cropper of his toed horse, looked up at the dismantled doWay, a female shriek, long, loud, and piercing, smote his ear. y It was a cry expressive of the extremity of anguish, and was

reverberated in dismal echoes by the dismantled halls of the nunnery, and the dark arches of the surrounding wood.