“Then I mistake,” said the Knight.  “But I felt certain I had heard the name, and that the owner thereof had some knowledge of my movements.  Now, I pray thee, dear Heart, tell me all.”

So sitting there on the ramparts of her old home, the stillness of the fragrant summer night all around, Mora told from the beginning the wondrous history of the trance of Mary Antony, and the blessed vision then vouchsafed to her.

The Knight listened with glowing eyes.  Once he interrupted to exclaim:  “Oh, true!  Most true!  More true than thou canst know.  Left alone in thy cell, I kneeled to our Lady, saying those very words:  ’Mother of God, send her to me!  Take pity on a hungry heart, a lonely home, a desolate hearth, and send her to me.’  I was alone.  Only our Lady whom I besought, heard those words pass my lips.”

Again Hugh kneeled, kissed the medallion, and lifted to heaven eyes luminous with awe and worship.

Continuing, Mora told him all, even to each detail of her long night vigil and her prayer for a sign which should be given direct to herself, so soon granted by the arrival and flight of the robin.  But this failed to impress Hugh, wholly absorbed in the vision, and unable to see where any element of hesitation or of uncertainty could come in.  Hearing it from Mora, he was spared the quaint turn which was bound to be given to any recital, however sacred, heard direct from old Mary Antony.

The Knight was a Crusader.  Many a fight he had fought for that cause representing the highest of Christian ideals.  Also, he had been a pilgrim, and had visited innumerable holy shrines.  For years, his soul had been steeped in religion, in that Land where true religion had its birth, and all within him, which was strongest and most manly, had responded with a simplicity of faith, yet with a depth of ardent devotion, which made his religion the most vital part of himself.  This it was which had given him a noble fortitude in bearing his sorrow.  This it was which now gave him a noble exultation in accepting his great happiness.  It filled him with rapture, that his wife should have been given to him in direct response to his own earnest petition.

When at length Mora stood up, stretching her arms above her head and straightening her supple limbs: 

“My beloved,” he said, “if the vision had not been given, wouldst thou not have come to me?  Should I have had to ride away from Worcester alone?”

Standing beside him, she answered, tenderly: 

“Dear Hugh, my most faithful and loyal Knight, being here—­and oh so glad to be here—­how can I say it?  Yet I must answer truly.  But for the vision, I should not have come.  I could not have broken my vows.  No blessing would have followed had I come to you, trailing broken vows, like chains behind me.  But our Lady herself set me free and bid me go.  Therefore I came to you; and therefore am I here.”