* * * * *

I was sick at heart when I heard that, and I strove to silence what my soul told me must be my answer.

“It has persevered ever since, my son Richard,” I said?

He bowed his head.

“There is no savour in anything to me until I go,” he answered.  “This morning as I looked from over the wall upon the sacrament, my eyes were blinded:  I saw nothing but the species of bread.  I was forced to rest upon the assent of my faith.”

Again I attempted to silence what my soul told me.  It was the very power that Master Richard had taught me to use that was turning against what I desired.  I had not known until then how much I loved this quiet holy lad with grave eyes—­not until I thought I should lose him.

“There is no sin,” I said, “that has darkened your eyes?”

I saw him smile sideways at that, and he turned his head a little.

“My sins are neither blacker nor whiter than they have always been,” he said; “you know them all, my father.”

“And you wish to leave us?” I cried.

He unclasped his hands and laid one on my knee.  I was terrified at its purity, but his face was turned away, and he said nothing.

I had never heard the wood at that time of the evening so silent as it was then.  It was the time when, as the lax monks say, the birds say mattins (but the strict observants call it compline), but there was neither mattins nor compline then in the green wood.  It was all in a great hush, and the shadows from the trees fifty paces away had crept up and were at our feet.

Then he spoke again.

“Tell me what your soul tells you,” he said.

I put my hand on his brown head; I could not speak.  Then he rose at once, and stood smiling and looking on me, and the sunlight made a splendour in his hair, as it were his heavenly crown.

“Thank you, my father,” he said, though I had not spoken one word.

Then he turned and went into the hut, and left me to look upon the green woods through my tears, and to listen to a mavis that had begun to sing in one of the may-trees.  I knew he was gone to make ready.

* * * * *

The sun had quite gone down before he came out again, and the shadows were like a veil over the land; only the yellow flowers burned hot like candle flames before me.

He had four books in his hand and a little bottle, his hat on his shoulders, and the wooden sandals on his feet that he had worn to walk in four years before when he came to us.  His little linen picture of the five wounds was fastened over his breast with thorns.  He carried across his arm the second white-sleeved kirtle that he had, and his burse was on his girdle.  He held out two of the books to me.

“These are for you, my father,” he said; “the book of hours and the Regula Heremitarum I shall take with me, and all the rest of the mobills and the two other books I shall leave at our Lord’s disposal, except the bottle of Quintessence.”