“But I stood at the foot of the bed pondering, till the sister coming to me, said:  ’Master Physician, this is no time for dreaming; act—­the patients are waiting, the fell sickness grows worse in this hot close air; feel’—­(and she swung open the casement), ’the outer air is no fresher than the air inside; the wind blows dead toward the west, coming from the stagnant marshes; the sea is like a stagnant pool too, you can scarce hear the sound of the long, low surge breaking.’  I turned from her and went up to the sick man, and said:  ’Sir Knight, in spite of all the sickness about you, you yourself better strangely, and another month will see you with your sword girt to your side again.’  ’Thanks, kind master Hugh,’ he said, but impatiently, as if his mind were on other things, and he turned in his bed away from me restlessly.

“And till late that night I ministered to the sick in that hospital; but when I went away, I walked down to the sea, and paced there to and fro over the hard sand:  and the moon showed bloody with the hot mist, which the sea would not take on its bosom, though the dull east wind blew it onward continually.  I walked there pondering till a noise from over the sea made me turn and look that way; what was that coming over the sea?  Laus Deo! the WEST WIND:  Hurrah!  I feel the joy I felt then over again now, in all its intensity.  How came it over the sea? first, far out to sea, so that it was only just visible under the red-gleaming moonlight, far out to sea, while the mists above grew troubled, and wavered, a long level bar of white; it grew nearer quickly, it gathered form, strange, misty, intricate form—­the ravelled foam of the green sea; then oh! hurrah!  I was wrapped in it,—­the cold salt spray—­drenched with it, blinded by it, and when I could see again, I saw the great green waves rising, nodding and breaking, all coming on together; and over them from wave to wave leaped the joyous WEST WIND; and the mist and the plague clouds were sweeping back eastward in wild swirls; and right away were they swept at last, till they brooded over the face of the dismal stagnant meres, many miles away from our fair city, and there they pondered wrathfully on their defeat.

“But somehow my life changed from the time when I beheld the two lovers, and I grew old quickly.”  He ceased; then after a short silence said again:  “And that was long ago, very long ago, I know not when it happened.”  So he sank back again, and for a while no one spoke; till Giles said at last: 

“Once in full daylight I saw a vision, while I was waking, while the eyes of men were upon me; long ago on the afternoon of a thunderous summer day, I sat alone in my fair garden near the city; for on that day a mighty reward was to be given to the brave man who had saved us all, leading us so mightily in that battle a few days back; now the very queen, the lady of the land, whom all men reverenced almost as the Virgin Mother, so kind and good and beautiful