The Lords of Stramen and Hers were sleeping with their fathers.  The hill on which the Pilgrim’s Chapel stood was no longer crowned with a castle, but with a monastery occupied by Benedictine monks.  The whole lordship of Hers was blooming under their munificent administration.  Humbert, whose long locks had now seen eighty winters, still lived at the foot of the hill, surrounded by a goodly number of stalwart sons and fair-haired daughters.  And sometimes in the long winter evenings, when the fire sparkled brightly and the old man was garrulous with joy, he would tell how he once entered a hostile castle as a minnesinger with a noble lover, and how the knight defied the angry father.  Yet he never revealed that this knight was the generous abbot who now supplied them with the means of innocent mirth, who ministered to all their wants, and whose life was so meek and blameless.  For Gilbert de Hers was abbot in the cells that had once been the halls of his sires.

And one word, reader.  It was not after the Lady Margaret’s death that he embraced the resolution of dedicating himself to God, but on the battle-field of the Elster, and over the corpse of Rodolph of Suabia.  He had proved his sincerity in the wars of Matilda, and when he quitted the princess for Monte Cassino, it was to assume the habit of the novice.

* * * * *

One bright afternoon in the fall of 1126, two aged men were walking arm-in-arm toward the Church of the Nativity.  One was attired as a Benedictine, the other as a knight.  They stopped at the church and before a cluster of tombs.  On one of the slabs was carved a Greek cross with a single tear under it, and beneath the tear the words: 

“O crux sancta adjuva nos.”

It was the resting-place of the Lady Margaret, between the graves of her father and mother.  The monk and the knight knelt down and prayed.  As they rose, the bells of the church announced the close of day, and ushered in the TRUCE OF GOD.

With their bosoms heaving with recollections of the past, Gilbert of Hers and Henry of Stramen went into the church where fifty years before they had met in youth and enmity, and they knelt together beside the grave of Father Omehr, with their hearts full of tenderness and hope and love, while the sun of ancient Suabia was setting, and the bells poured forth their silvery peal.

THE END