Chapter II. THE NIGHT WANDERER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 93, 6 February 1875, Page 14

Chapter 11. THE NIGHT WANDERER.

Our traveller, a burgess of Nottingham, John Osmond by name, involuntarily drew his breath with a gasp at thh horrid cry. A superstitious person might have referred that sound, so unearthly and appalling, to a supernatural cause, and supposed that it proceeded from the wailing spirit of one of the poor nuns, so many of whom had, throughout the country, died of want when turned, by <jhe atrocious monarch, from their holy and happy homes. Such was not the case with John Osmond, as practical a man and a steady a tradesman as any member of the corporation, before or after his own time, From human lips that woeful cry proceeded — that he knew. That it might be a note warning of danger to himself, as well as of anguish to the unhappy person who uttered it, he also knew. The destruction of the convents and monasteries had clone much to damage social order. Not only were the members of the various religious commu- I nities involved in the most dire distress, but innuxnerable persons among the trading, as well as the agricultural classes, whose industry had been employed by the religious establishments, were deprived of their means of living and made destitute. The result of this was not only an alarming increase in the ranks of the poor, but in the numbers of idle, dissolute men, who banded together for the purpose of robbery. It flashed like lightening, then, on the mind of Osmond, that some strayed traveller like himself had been set upon, and. was perhaps being murdered in the ruins. No man travelled unarmed in those days. Osmond drew the short, strong sword he wore — a serviceable weapon all unlike the slender gentlemanly rapier — and dashed through the yawning aperture of the dismantled doorway. The door opened to a spacious hall, on one side of which a lofty open archway gave ingress to the convent chapel, on the other to a cloister or perambulatory. Osmond ascertained this by the light of a hand lamp, which Btood in a niche, from which probably the statue of the founder or patron of the convent had been torn. Some living person, then, was about the ruins, who must have placed the lamp there. Osmond caught it up, his first thought of robbers dispelled — mor probable it was that some sorrowful votaress lingered about the desolate building, where she once had hoped to end an innocent life. Osmond entered the chapel ; all there was in the confusion of ruin. The altar overthrown, the snow drifting through the gap in the roof, the wind howling through the tall casements denuded of glass, with a fury that well nigh quenched the feeble flicker of the lamp. There was naught in the ruined chapel save the blind bat, which, dazzled even by the faint ray of the lamp, quitted its roost and flapped its leathern wings in Osmond's face. He paused, and looked auxiously around him. Surely he had not been the sport of fancy. It was a human shriek he had heard. Hark ! it conies again, echoing more dismally now he stands within the ruined sanctuary. The sound comes, however, from an opposite direction. He turns back, he goes towards the cloister, and there he sees a tall, slender figure flit along, and out into the driving snow. It is the figure of a woman, draped in a sable robe — not the habit of a nun, for that it would be treason to wear. Osmond is a man in the prime of life, strong and swift of foot, and he pursues the fugitive. As she passed from under the open arch of the cloister, into what had once been the convent garden, she turned her head. Then, by the pale ray of the lamp, which he held, Osmond beheld a fair sweet face, very pale and wasted, and lighted up by a pair of wild dark eyes. The face of a young creature who could scarce have passed her twenty-second year; but, in strange contrast to her youth and beauty, the hair that surrounded it and swept down the shoulders, was white as the descending snow. In vain Osmond called upon this female to stop, assured her that he himself was a harmless and benighted traveller, wibh renewed shrieks she fled before him and disappeared. The dismal cries, however, ceased suddenly as it seemed at no great distance. Shading the lamp with his hand from the wind, which threatened to extinguish it, Osmond was slowly making his way through the snow in. the direction in which, by her footprints, he could tell that the woman had fled. He had not, however, taken twenty steps, when a redder and stronger light than that which he carried, flashed athwart the gloom. I Then he heard an exclamation about his horse, which he had left tethered to the shaft of a broken column in the porch. The next moment two men carrying torches appeared. One of them was apparently advanced in life, the other, a wellbuilt, good-humoured-looking young fellow, about five and twenty was probably, from the resemblance between them, the son of the' elder man. Both were attired after the fashion of the better sort of j peasants, or small farmers, of those days. j They advanced rapidly when they saw Osmond with the lamp in his hand. j Their anxious brows smoothed when they accosted him, for his staid and respectable appearance reassurred them j for, even as he j had done, they feared that some bandit had chosen the ruined con- i ent as the scene of his exploits. I