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me with the good red cross, and I went to the Holy Land.”

      “And thou earnest back, great of name, and blessed in soul?”

      “I came back, having won no name, and with no blessing, for I knew more of evil than when I set forth.”

      “But, Father, at our Lord’s sepulchre!” urged Bertram.

      “Youngling,” said Wilfred, a rare, sweet smile flitting across his lips, “dost thou blunder as Mary did? Is the Lord yet in the sepulchre? ‘He is not here; He is risen.’ And why then should His sepulchre be holier than other graves, when He that made the holiness is there no longer?”

      “But where then is our Lord?” asked Bertram, rather perplexed.

      “He is where thou wouldst have Him,” was the quiet answer. “If that be in thine heart, ay:—and if no, no.”

      Bertram meditated for a little while upon this reply.

      “But seest thou any reason, Father, wherefore I should not become a great man?” he said, reverting to his original topic.

      “I see no reason at all, Bertram Lyngern, wherefore thou shouldst not become a very great man.”

      Still Bertram was dissatisfied. He had an instinctive suspicion that his great man and Wilfred’s were not exactly the same person.

      “But what meanest by a great man, Father?”

      “What meanest thou?”

      “I mean a warrior,” said the lad, “dauntless in war, and faithful in love—brave, noble, and high-souled, alway and every whither.”

      “And so mean I.”

      “But I mean one that men shall talk of, and tell much of his noble deeds and mighty prowess.”

      “Were he less brave without?”

      “He were less puissant, Father.”

      Wilfred did not reply for a minute, but devoted himself to hanging golden apples from the stiff boughs of his very medieval tree.

      “The heroes of the world and those of the Church,” he said at last, “be rarely the same men. A man cannot be an hero in all things. The warrior is not the statesman, nor is neither of them the bishop. Thou must choose thy calling, lad.”

      “Yet a true hero must be an hero all the world over, Father—in every calling.”

      “How much hast heard of one Master Vegelius?”

      “Never afore this minute.”

      “I thought so much.”

      “Who was he?” inquired Bertram.

      “The best and most cunning limner of this or any land.”

      “Oh! Only a scriptorius?”

      “Only a scriptorius,” said the monk quietly—not at all offended. “And it may be that he never heard of some of thy heroes.”

      “My heroes are Alexander and Charlemagne,” said Bertram proudly. “He must have heard of them.”

      Wilfred dipped his pen in the ink with a rather amused smile.

      “Now, Father Wilfred!”

      “I was only thinking, lad, that when I set up my hero, he shall not be a man that met his death in a wine-butt.”

      “What?—Oh! Alexander. Well, we have all our failings,” admitted Bertram, reluctant to give up his favourite.

      “Thou sayest sooth, lad.”

      “Father Wilfred, who is thine hero?”

      “Wist thou who is God’s hero?” asked the illuminator, laying down his pen, and fixing his eyes on the boy. “God Himself once told men who was their greatest. And who was it, countest?”

      “Was it Charlemagne?” eagerly responded the unchronological Bertram.

      “ ‘Among men that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than—’ ”

      “Whom?” interpolated the boy, when Wilfred paused.

      “ ‘John the Baptist.’ ”

      Bertram’s face fell with a most disappointed look.

      “Why, what did he? How was he great?”

      “He was great in four matters, methinks, in one whereof only thou or I may not have leave to follow him. In that he foreran our Lord, his deed is beyond our reach: but in three other concernments, in no wise. Firstly, he preached Christ.”

      “That the priests do,” interjected Bertram.

      “Do they so?” asked Wilfred rather drily. “Secondly, he feared not, when need were, to gainsay a master in whose hand lay his life. And lastly, he knew how to deny himself.”

      “But, Father Wilfred! all those be easy enough.”

      “Be they so, lad? How many times hast tried them?”

      “In good sooth, never tried I any of them,” said Bertram honestly.

      “Then wait ere thou say so much.”

      There was another pause; and then Bertram found another question.

      “Father Wilfred, what thinkest of Sir John de Wycliffe?”

      “I never brake bread with him, lad,” said the monk, busy with the griffin.

      “But what thinkest?”

      “How should I know?”

      Evidently the illuminator did not mean to commit himself.

      “Is he a great man or a small?”

      “God wot,” said the monk.

      “Hugh Calverley saith he is the greatest man that ever lived,” said Bertram.

      “Greater than Saint John Baptist?”

      “His work is of the like sort,” pursued Bertram meditatively. “ ’Tis preaching and reproving men of their sins.”

      “God speed all His work!” said the monk.

      “Father, what didst after thy turning back from Holy Land?”

      “What all men do once a life. What thou wilt do.”

      “Marry, what so?”

      “Why, I became a fool.”

      “Father Wilfred! I counted thee alway a wise man.”

      “A sorry blunder, lad,” said Wilfred, putting in the griffin’s teeth.

      “Wouldst say a Court fool?”

      “Nay—a worser fool than that.”

      “How so?”

      “I trusted a woman,” answered Wilfred—bitterly, for him.

      “Father! hadst thou ever a lady-love?”

      Bertram’s interest was intense at this juncture.

      “Go to, Bertram Lyngern!” answered the monk, looking up with a smile. “Be thy thoughts on lady-loves already? Nay, lad; she that I trusted was a kinswoman—no love. Little love in very deed was there betwixt us. And yet”—his voice altered suddenly—“I knew what that was too—once.”

      “And she mocked thee, trow?” asked Bertram, who expected a small sensation novel to spring out of this avowal.

      Wilfred worked in silence for a minute. Then he said in a low tone, “Forty years’ violets have freshened and faded on her grave; nor one of all of them more fair ne sweet than she.”

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