The boy hesitated, blushed, stammered; then he came around to Winfried’s seat, bringing the book.  “Take the book, my father,” he cried, “and read it for me.  I cannot see the meaning plain, though I love the sound of the words.  Religion I know, and the doctrines of our faith, and the life of priests and nuns in the cloister, for which my grandmother designs me, though it likes me little.  And fighting I know, and the life of warriors and heroes, for I have read of it in Virgil and the ancients, and heard a bit from the soldiers at Treves; and I would fain taste more of it, for it likes me much.  But how the two lives fit together, or what need there is of armor for a clerk in holy orders, I can never see.  Tell me the meaning, for if there is a man in all the world that knows it, I am sure it is none other than thou.”

So Winfried took the book and closed it, clasping the boy’s hand with his own.

“Let us first dismiss the others to their vespers,” said he, “lest they should be weary.”

A sign from the abbess; a chanted benediction; a murmuring of sweet voices and a soft rustling of many feet over the rushes on the floor; the gentle tide of noise flowed out through the doors and ebbed away down the corridors; the three at the head of the table were left alone in the darkening room.

Then Winfried began to translate the parable of the soldier into the realities of life.

At every turn he knew how to flash a new light into the picture out of his own experience.  He spoke of the combat with self, and of the wrestling with dark spirits in solitude.  He spoke of the demons that men had worshipped for centuries in the wilderness, and whose malice they invoked against the stranger who ventured into the gloomy forest.  Gods, they called them, and told strange tales of their dwelling among the impenetrable branches of the oldest trees and in the caverns of the shaggy hills; of their riding on the wind-horses and hurling spears of lightning against their foes.  Gods they were not, but foul spirits of the air, rulers of the darkness.  Was there not glory and honor in fighting with them, in daring their anger under the shield of faith, in putting them to flight with the sword of truth?  What better adventure could a brave man ask than to go forth against them, and wrestle with them, and conquer them?

“Look you, my friends,” said Winfried, “how sweet and peaceful is this convent to-night, on the eve of the nativity of the Prince of Peace!  It is a garden full of flowers in the heart of winter; a nest among the branches of a great tree shaken by the winds; a still haven on the edge of a tempestuous sea.  And this is what religion means for those who are chosen and called to quietude and prayer and meditation.