What a man he was!  Fair and slight, but straight as a spear and strong as an oaken staff.  His face was still young; the smooth skin was bronzed by wing and sun.  His gray eyes, clear and kind, flashed like fire when he spoke of his adventures, and of the evil deeds of the false priests with whom he had contended.

What tales he had told that day!  Not of miracles wrought by sacred relics; nor of courts and councils and splendid cathedrals; though he knew much of these things, and had been at Rome and received the Pope’s blessing.  But to-day he had spoken of long journeyings by sea and land; of perils by fire and flood; of wolves and bears and fierce snowstorms and black nights in the lonely forest; of dark altars of heaven gods, and weird, bloody sacrifices, and narrow escapes from wandering savages.

The little novices had gathered around him, and their faces had grown pale and their eyes bright as they listened with parted lips, entranced in admiration, twining their arms about one another’s shoulders and holding closely together, half in fear, half in delight.  The older nuns had turned from their tasks and paused, in passing by, to hear the pilgrim’s story.  Too well they knew the truth of what he spoke.  Many a one among them had seen the smoke rising from the ruins of her father’s roof.  Many a one had a brother far away in the wild country to whom her heart went out night and day, wondering if he were still among the living.

But now the excitements of that wonderful day were over; the hours of the evening meal had come; the inmates of the cloister were assembled in the refectory.

On the dais sat the stately Abbess Addula, daughter of King Dagobert, looking a princess indeed, in her violet tunic, with the hood and cuffs of her long white robe trimmed with fur, and a snowy veil resting like a crown on her snowy hair.  At her right hand was the honoured guest, and at her left hand her grandson, the young Prince Gregor, a big, manly boy, just returned from school.

The long, shadowy hall, with its dark-brown raters and beams; the double rows of nuns, with their pure veils and fair faces; the ruddy flow of the slanting sunbeams striking upwards through the tops of the windows and painting a pink glow high up on the walls,—­it was all as beautiful as a picture, and as silent.  For this was the rule of the cloister, that at the table all should sit in stillness for a little while, and then one should read aloud, while the rest listened.

“It is the turn of my grandson to read to-day,” said the abbess to Winfried; “we shall see how much he has learned in the school.  Read, Gregor; the place in the book is marked.”

The tall lad rose from his seat and turned the pages of the manuscript.  It was a copy of Jerome’s version of the Scriptures in Latin, and the marked place was in the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians,—­the passage where he describes the preparation of the Christian as the arming of a warrior for glorious battle.  The young voice rang out clearly, rolling the sonorous words, without slip or stumbling, to the end of the chapter.