Here he attempted to pass; but she seized him, and with so powerful a grasp that for a moment his intention was foiled, so sudden and unexpected was the attack.  Though of a stout and muscular shape, yet was he holden tightly, as if she were exulting in her strength.  Either malice or madness had given her a vigour of body beyond that of her sex.

“Michael de Poininges!”

The stranger started at this recognition.

“I warn thee!  Thinkest thou yon fiend will forward thy mission.  Wilt thou tear the prey from the jaws of the famished and ravening wolf?  Beware!”

Some score of years had elapsed since De Poininges was a visitor in these parts; and he was now upon some sacred mission to the Prior of Burscough, Thomas de Litherland, whose great power and reckless intrepidity of guilt had won for him a name of no common note, even in those ages of privileged injustice and oppression.  No bosom but his own, at least in that neighbourhood, could have been privy to the business which brought him hither; and yet he found a woman casually crossing his path, whose knowledge of his errand was but too evident, and whose appearance and deportment might well excuse the suspicions he entertained as to her familiarity with the EVIL ONE.

“Go, poor beast!  Thou art but fattened for the slaughter!” She said this, apparently addressing a stout buck that was sheltering in the thicket.  De Poininges shuddered, as she looked on him askance, with some dubious meaning.

“I’ll meet thee at supper-time.”

This was said with a slow and solemn enunciation, as though some terrible warning was intended, yet durst he not question her further; and ere he could reply she had disappeared in the recesses of the forest.

The rain now poured down in torrents, and De Poininges was fain to hasten with all possible expedition towards the porter’s gate.

The priory of Burscough had been founded the century preceding, for a brotherhood of Black Canons, by Robert Fitzhenry, Lord of Lathom.  He endowed it with considerable property, emoluments, and alms, and, according to the weak superstition of the age, thought thereby to obtain pardon and rest for the souls of Henry the Second, John, Earl of Moreton, himself, his wife, and all his ancestors; at the same time wishing the kingdom of heaven to all persons who would increase the gifts, and consigning to the devil and his angels all who should impiously infringe on his bequests.

It was dedicated to St Nicholas, and a rude effigy of the saint was carved over the south porch of the chapel, with two or three naked children at his feet.  The building was not large, but the architecture was chaste and beautiful, a noble specimen of the early Gothic, then superseding the ponderous forms and proportions of the Norman, or rather Saxon era.  The arches were sharply pointed.  The windows, narrow and lancet-shaped, were deeply recessed; the slender shafts of the columns were carried in clusters to a vast height, surmounted by pinnacles of rich and elegant tracery; these gave a light and airy character to the whole, highly significant of the buoyant feelings that accompanied so wonderful an escape from the heavy trammels of their predecessors.