A few warm, affectionate words, and they came to the spot where their road divided—­the one to the northeast, the other to the southeast.  They tried to preserve the proper self control, but it failed them, and their eyes were very limpid.  So they parted.

At midday the two friars rested in a sweet glade, and slept after a frugal meal, till the birds awoke them with their songs.

“They remind me of an incident in the life of our dear father Francis,” said Ginepro, “which my father witnessed.”

“Tell it as we go.  Sweet converse shortens the toil of the way.”

“Once, when he was preaching, the birds drowned his voice with their songs of gladness, whereupon he said: 

“’My sisters, the birds, it is now my turn to speak.  You have sung your sweet songs to God.  Now let me tell men how good He is.’

“And the birds were silent.”

“I can quite believe it.”

“His power over animals was wonderful.  Once a little hare was brought in, all alive, for the food of the brotherhood, and they were just going to kill the wee thing, when Francis came in and pitied it.

“‘Little brother leveret,’ he said.  ’How didst thou let thyself be taken?’

“The poor hare rushed from the hands of him who held it, and took refuge in the robe of the father.

“’Nay, go back to thy home, and do not let thyself be caught again,’ he said, and they took it back to the woods and let it go.”

Just at this point they reached Chiddinglye, and as they emerged from the forest on the green, Ginepro spied a number of children playing at seesaw in a timber yard, laughing and shouting merrily.

Instantly he cried, “Oh, there they are; I love seesaw; I must go and have a turn.”

“Are we not too old for such sport?” said Martin.

“Not a bit.  I feel quite like a child,” and off he ran to join the children amidst the laughter of a few older people.

But the young brother did not simply play at seesaw.  He got the children around him, after a while, and soon held them breathless as he related the story of the Child of Bethlehem and the Holy Innocents, stories which came quite fresh to them in those days, when there were few books, and fewer readers.  And these little Sussex children drank in the touching story with all their little ears and hearts.  In all Ginepro did there was a wondrous freshness.  And that same evening, when the woodmen came home from work, Martin preached to the whole village from the steps of the churchyard cross.

It was a strangely impressive scene.  The mighty background of the forest; the friar in his gray dress, his features all animation and life; the multitude listening as if they were carried away by the eloquence of one whose like they had never seen before; the tears running down furrows on their grimy cheeks, specially visible on those of the iron smelters, of whom there were many in old Sussex.