been robbed.  So the old black strife began again.  Many and many a dawn, as he thought of these things, he went out alone into the shadowless places of the land, to the quiet lapping sea, to the gardens, or to the housetop fronting the new-born day, with prayer throbbing for utterance, but a tongue too dry to pray.  Despair seized on him, and he led his men out to death-dealing, that so haply he might find death for himself.  The time wore to early summer, while he was nightly visited by the thought of his sin, and daily winning more stuff for repentance.  Then, one morning, instead of going out singly to battle with his own soul, he went in to the Abbot Milo.  What follows shall be told in his own words.

’The King came to me very early in the morning of Saints Primus and Felician, while I yet lay in my bed.  “Milo, Milo,” said he, “what must I do to be saved?” He was very white and wild, shaking all over.  I said, “Dear Master, save thy people.  On all sides they cry to thee—­from England, from Normandy, from Anjou, from Joppa also, and Acre.  There is no lack of entreaty.”  He shook his head.  “Here,” he said, “I can do no more.  God is against me, the work too holy for such a wretch.”  “Lord,” I said, “we are all wretches, Heaven save us!  If your Grace is held off God’s inheritance, you can at least hold others from your own.  Here, may be, you took a charge too heavy; but there, at home, the charge was laid upon you.  Renouncing here, you shall gain there.  It cannot be otherwise.”  I believed in what I said; but he gripped the caps of his knees and rocked himself about.  “They have beaten me, Milo.  Saint-Pol, Burgundy, Beauvais—­I am bayed by curs.  What am I, Milo?” “Sire,” I said, “your father’s son.  As they bayed the old lion, so they bay the young.”  He gaped at me, open-mouthed.  “By God.  Milo,” he said, “I bayed him myself, and believed that he deserved it.”  “Lord,” I answered, “who am I to judge a great king?  For my part I never believed that monstrous sin was upon him.”  Here he jumped up.  “I am going home, Milo,” he said; “I am going home.  I am going to my father’s tomb.  I will do penance there, and serve my people, and live clean.  Look now, Milo, shrive me if thou hast the power, for my need is great.”  The thought was blessed to him.  He confessed his sins then and there, all a huddle of them, weeping so bitterly that I should have wept myself had I not been ready rather to laugh and crack my fingers to see the breaking up of his long and deadly frost.  Before I shrived him, moreover, I dared to speak of Madame Jehane, how he had now lost her for ever, and why; how she was now at last a man’s wife, and that by her own deliberate will; and how also he must do his duty by the Queen.  To all of which he gave heed and promises of quiet endurance.  Then I shrived him, and that very morning gave him the Lord’s sacred body in the Church of the Sepulchre.  I believed him sane; and so for a long time he was, as he testified by deeds of incredible valour.’