“What an absurd story,” the sceptic may say.  No doubt it is to us, but a man must live in his own age, and there was nought absurd or improbable to young Hubert in it all.

And when the weird tale was finished, and the hour of midnight tolled boom! boom! boom! from the tower above, every stroke sent a thrill through the heart of the youth.  That dread hour, when, as men thought, the powers of darkness had the world to themselves, when a thousand ghosts shrieked on the hollow wind, when midnight hags swept through the tainted air, and goblins gibbered in sepulchres.

Just then Hubert caught his father’s glance, and it made each separate hair erect itself: 

Like quills upon the fretful porcupine.

“Father,” cried the boy, “what art thou gazing at? what aileth thee?  I see nought amiss.”

Words came from the father’s lips, not in reply to his son, but as if to some object unseen by all besides.

“Yes, unhappy ghost, I may dare thy livid terrors now.  My son, thy proxy, is by my side, pure and shameless, brave and trustworthy.  He shall carry thy sword to the holy soil and dye it ’deep in Paynim blood.’  Then thou and I may rest in peace.”

“Father, I see nought.”

“Not there, between those pillars?”

“What is it?”

“A dead man, with a sword wound in his open breast, which he displays.  His eyes live, yea, and the wound lives.”

“No, father, there is nothing.”

“Then go and stand between those pillars, and prove it to me to be void.”

Hubert hesitated.  He would sooner have fought a hundred boyish battles with fist, quarterstaff, or even deadly weapons—­but this—­

“Ah, thou darest not.  Nay, I blame thee not, yet thou didst say there was nothing.”

Hubert could not resist that pleading tone in which the sire seemed to ask release from his own delusion.  He went with determined step, and stood on the indicated spot.

“He is gone.  He fled before thee.  The omen is good.  Thou shalt deliver thy sire—­let us pray together.”

Sire and son knelt until the first note of the matin song just before daybreak (it was the month of May) broke the utterance of the father and, we fear we must own it, the sleep of the son.

Domine labia mea aperies
Et os meum annuntiabit laudem Tuam.

The sombre-robed monks were in the choir, the organ rolling out its deep notes in accompaniment to the plain song of the Venite exultemus, which then, as now, preceded the psalms for the day.  Then came the hymn: 

Lo night and clouds and darkness wrap
The world in dark array;
The morning dawns, the sun breaks in,
Hence, hence, ye shades—­away {16}!

“Come, Hubert, dear son, worthy of thy sainted mother.  We will praise Him, too, for He has lifted the darkness from my heart.”

Chapter 9:  The Other Side Of The Picture.