“Where are you taking me?”

“To the good sisters of Saint Clare, who will take care of thee for Christ’s sake.”

So he strove to wipe away the tears from the orphan’s eyes.

He reached Oxford, gave up his charge to the charitable sisterhood, then reported himself to his academical and ecclesiastical superiors, who were pleased to express their approval of all that he had done.  But as a measure of precaution they bade him change and destroy his infected raiment, to take a certain electuary supposed to render a person less disposed to infection, and to retire early to his couch.

All this he did; but after his first sleep he woke up with an aching head and intolerable sense of heat—­feverish heat.  He understood it all too well, and lost no time in commending himself to his heavenly Father, for he felt that he might soon lose consciousness and be unable to do so.

A purer spirit never commended itself to its Maker and Redeemer.  But it was not in this he put his trust.  It was in Him of whom Saint Francis sang so sweetly: 

To Him my heart He drew
While hanging on the tree,
From whence He said to me
I am the Shepherd true;
Love sets my heart on fire—­
Love of the Crucified.

And ere his delirium set in, Martin made a full resignation of his will to God.  He had hoped to do much for love of his Lord, to carry the message of the Gospel into the Andredsweald, where the kindred of his mother yet lived, and the thought that he should never see their forest glades again was painful.  And the blankness of unconsciousness, the fearful nature of the black death, was in itself repulsive; but it had all been ordered and settled by Infinite Love before ever he was born, probably before the worlds were framed, and Martin said with all his heart the words breathed by the Incarnate God, when groaning beneath the olive tree in mysterious agony: 

“Not my will, but thine, be done.”

And then he lapsed into delirium.

The next sensation of which he was conscious, and which he afterwards remembered, for we have not done with our Martin yet, was one of a singular character.  A glorious light, but intensely painful, seemed before his eyes.  It burnt, it dazzled, it confounded him; yet he admired and adored it, for it seemed to him the glory of God thus fashioning itself before him.  And on that brilliant orb, glowing like a sun, was a black spot which seemed to Martin to be himself, a blot on God’s glory, and he cried, “Oh, let me perish, if but Thy glory be unstained,” when a voice seemed to reply, “My glory shall be shown in thy redemption, not in thy destruction.”

Probably this took place at the crisis of the disease, and the physical and spiritual sensations were in union throughout the illness.  For now Martin was delirious with joy—­sweet strains of music were ever about him.  The angels gathered in his cell and sang carols, songs of love to the Crucified.  One stormy night, when gentle but heavy rain descended, patter, patter, on the roof above his head, he thought Gabriel and all the angelic choir were there, singing the Gloria in Excelsis, poising themselves on wings without the window, and the strain: