When the officer had looked on him a moment, he bade him turn round, and so, I suppose, sat staring upon the youth’s holy shoulders that were covered with the old stripes that he had given himself.  At last Master Richard faced about again; and again, as he looked upon the solemn face of the man, he began to laugh.  It seemed a marvellous jest, he thought, that so long a consideration should be given to so small a matter as a whipping.  I am glad I was not there to bear that laughter; I think it would quite have broken my heart.

* * * * *

Well, my children, I cannot write what followed, but the end of it was that the post to which Master Richard’s hands were tied, and the face of Master-Lieutenant standing behind it, and the wall behind him with the weapons upon it, grew white and frosted to the young man’s eyes, and began to toss up and down, and a great roaring sounded in his ears.  He thought, he told me afterwards, that he was on Calvary beneath the rood, and that the rocks were rending about him.

So he swooned clean away, and was carried back again to his prison.

* * * * *

Now I learned afterwards that the officer had no authority such as he pretended, but that he had sworn to his fellows that he could find out the truth by a pretence of it, thinking Master Richard to be a poor crazed fool who would cry out and confess at the touch of the whip.

But Master Richard did not cry out for mercy.  And I hold that he passed this first trial bravely.

Of the Second Temptation of Master Richard:  and how he overcame it

Exacuerunt ut gladium linguas suas:  interderunt arcum rem amaram:  ut sagittent in occultis immaculatum.

They have whetted their tongues like a sword:  they have bent their bow a bitter thing, to shoot in secret the undefiled.—­Ps. lxiii, 4, 5.

X

As Master Richard had striven to serve God in the trinity of his nature, so was he to be tried in the trinity of his nature.  It was first in his body that he was tempted, by pain and the fear of it; and his second trial came later in the same day—­which was in his mind.

He lay abed that morning till his dinner was brought to him, knowing sometimes what passed—­how a rat came out and looked on him awhile, moving its whiskers; how the patch of sunlight upon the wall darkened and passed; and how a bee came in and hummed a great while in the room; and sometimes conscious of nothing but his own soul.  He could make no effort, he told me, and he did not attempt it.  He only lay still, committing himself to God Almighty.

He could not eat the meat, even had he wished it, but he drank a little broth and ate some bread, and then slept again.

* * * * *