Master Richard told me that when he heard that it was as a blow in the face to him.  He could not answer, nor even think clearly.  It was as if a gross darkness, full of wings and eyes and mocking faces pressed upon him, and he believed that he cried out, and that he must have swooned, for when he came to himself again his face was all wet with water that the young man had thrown upon it.

It was a minute or two more before he could speak, and during that time it appeared to him that he did not think himself, but that ideas moved before his eyes, manifesting themselves.  At first there was a doubt as to whether the young man had spoken the truth, and whether any messenger had been to the village at all, but the mention of the hazels, the stag and the pig, and his books, dispelled that thought.

Again it did not seem possible that the young man should have lied as to what it was that I was said to have answered; if they had wished to lie, surely they would have lied more entirely, and related that I had denied all knowledge of him.  But the falsehood was so subtle an one; it was so well interwoven with truth that I count it to have been impossible for Master Richard in his sickness and confusion to have disentangled the one from the other.  I have heard a physician say, too, that the surest manner to perplex a man is to suggest to him that his brain is clouded; at such words he often loses all knowledge of self; he doubts his own thoughts, and even his senses.

This, then, was Master Richard’s temptation—­that he should doubt himself, his friends, and even our Lord who had manifested Himself so often and so kindly to the eyes of his soul.

Yet he did not yield to it, although he could not repel it.  He cried upon Jesu in his heart, and then set the puzzle by.

He looked at the young man once more.

“And why do you tell me this?” he asked.

The clerk (if he were a clerk) answered him first by another Judas-caress or two, and then by Judas-words.

“Master Hermit,” he said, “I am but a poor priest, but my words have some weight with two or three persons of the court; and these again have some weight with my lord cardinal.  I asked leave to come and tell you this as kindly as I could, and to see what you would say.  I observed you in the hall the other day, and I have a good report of your reasonableness from the monastery.  I conceived, too, a great love for you when I saw you, and wish you well; and I think I can do you a great service, and get you forth from this place that you may go whither you will,—­to your house by the stream or to some other place where none know you.  Would it not be pleasant to you to be in the country again, and to serve God with all your might in some sweet and secret place where men are not?”

“I can serve God here as there,” answered Master Richard.

“Well—­let that be.  But what if God Almighty wishes you to be at peace?  We must not rush foolishly upon death.  That is forbidden to us.”