(This was a lie, my children. No man from London had spoken with me. But you shall see what follows.)

"And what did Sir John tell him," asked Master Richard quietly. "Did he say he knew nothing of me?"

Now he asked this, thinking that perhaps this was a method of tempting him. And so it was, but worse than he thought it.

"No, poor lad," said the young man very pitifully, "Sir John knew you well enough. The messenger saw your little house, too, and the hazels about it; and the stream, and the path that you have made; and there were beasts there, he said, a stag and pig that looked lamentably out from the thicket."

Now observe the Satanic guile of this! For at the mention of all his little things, and his creatures that loved him, Master Richard could not hold back his tears, for he had thought so often upon them, and desired to see them again. So the young man stayed in his talk, and caressed his hand again, and murmured compa.s.sionately.

Presently Master Richard was quiet, and asked the young man to tell him what the parson had said.

"To-morrow," said the young man, making as if to rise.

"To-day," said Master Richard.

So the young man went on.

"He went to the parsonage with Sir John, and talked with him there a long while--"

"Did he see my books?" said Master Richard in his simplicity.

"Yes, poor lad; he saw your books. And then Sir John told him what he thought."

"And what was that?" said Master Richard, faint with the thought of the answer.

The young man caressed his hand again, and then pressed it as if to give him courage.

"Sir John told him that you were a good fellow; that you injured neither man nor beast; and that all spoke well of you."

Then the young man stayed again.

"Ah! tell me," cried Master Richard.

"Well, poor lad; as G.o.d sees us now, Sir John told the messenger that he thought you to be deluded; that you deemed yourself holy when you were not, and that you talked with the saints and our Lord, but that these appearances were no more than the creations of your own sick brain. He said that he humoured you; for that he feared you would be troublesome if he did not, and that all the folk of the village said the same thing to you, to please you and keep you quiet.--Ah! poor child!"

The young man cried out as if in sorrow, and lifted Master Richard's hand and kissed it.

Master Richard told me that when he heard that it was as a blow in the face to him. He could not answer, nor even think clearly. It was as if a gross darkness, full of wings and eyes and mocking faces pressed upon him, and he believed that he cried out, and that he must have swooned, for when he came to himself again his face was all wet with water that the young man had thrown upon it.

It was a minute or two more before he could speak, and during that time it appeared to him that he did not think himself, but that ideas moved before his eyes, manifesting themselves. At first there was a doubt as to whether the young man had spoken the truth, and whether any messenger had been to the village at all, but the mention of the hazels, the stag and the pig, and his books, dispelled that thought.

Again it did not seem possible that the young man should have lied as to what it was that I was said to have answered; if they had wished to lie, surely they would have lied more entirely, and related that I had denied all knowledge of him. But the falsehood was so subtle an one; it was so well interwoven with truth that I count it to have been impossible for Master Richard in his sickness and confusion to have disentangled the one from the other. I have heard a physician say, too, that the surest manner to perplex a man is to suggest to him that his brain is clouded; at such words he often loses all knowledge of self; he doubts his own thoughts, and even his senses.

This, then, was Master Richard's temptation--that he should doubt himself, his friends, and even our Lord who had manifested Himself so often and so kindly to the eyes of his soul.

Yet he did not yield to it, although he could not repel it. He cried upon Jesu in his heart, and then set the puzzle by.

He looked at the young man once more.

"And why do you tell me this?" he asked.

The clerk (if he were a clerk) answered him first by another Judas-caress or two, and then by Judas-words.

"Master Hermit," he said, "I am but a poor priest, but my words have some weight with two or three persons of the court; and these again have some weight with my lord cardinal. I asked leave to come and tell you this as kindly as I could, and to see what you would say. I observed you in the hall the other day, and I have a good report of your reasonableness from the monastery. I conceived, too, a great love for you when I saw you, and wish you well; and I think I can do you a great service, and get you forth from this place that you may go whither you will,--to your house by the stream or to some other place where none know you. Would it not be pleasant to you to be in the country again, and to serve G.o.d with all your might in some sweet and secret place where men are not?"

"I can serve G.o.d here as there," answered Master Richard.

"Well--let that be. But what if G.o.d Almighty wishes you to be at peace?

We must not rush foolishly upon death. That is forbidden to us."

"I do not seek death," said Master Richard.

The clerk leaned over him a little, and Master Richard saw his eyes bent upon him with great tenderness.

"Master Hermit," he said, "I entreat you not to be your own enemy. You see that those that know you best love you, but they do not think you to be what you think you are---"

"I am nothing but G.o.d's man, and a sinner," said the lad.

"Well, they think your visions and the rest to be but delusions. And if they be delusions, why should not other matters be delusions too?"

"What matters?" asked Master Richard.

"Such matters as the tidings that you brought to the King."

"And what is it you would have me to do?" asked Master Richard again after a silence.

"It is only a little thing, poor lad--such a little thing! and then you will be able to go whither you will."

"And what is that little thing?"

"It is to tell me that you think them delusions too."

"But I do not think them so," said Master Richard.

"Think as you will then, Master Hermit; but, you know, when folks are sick we may tell them anything without sin. And the King is sick to death. I do not believe that you have bewitched him: you have too good a face and air for that--and for the matter of the _paternoster_ I do not value it at a straw. The King is sick with agony at what he thinks will come upon him after your words. He will not listen to my lord cardinal: he sits silent and terrified, and has taken no food to-day. But if you will but tell him, Master Hermit, that you were mistaken in your tidings--that it was but a fancy, and that you know better now--all will be well with him and with you, and with us all who love you both."

So the clerk spoke, tempting him, and leaned back again on his heels; and Master Richard lay a great while silent.

Now, I do not know who was this young man, whether he were a clerk or whether he were not a devil in form of a man. I could hear nothing of him at Court when I went there. It may be that he was one of those idle fellows that had come to Master Richard from time to time to ask him to make them hermits with him, else how did he know the matters of the stag and the pig and the stream and the rest? But it does not greatly matter whether his soul were a devil's or a man's, for in any case his words were Satan's. If I had not heard what came after I should have believed this temptation to be the most subtle ever devised in h.e.l.l and permitted from heaven. He spoke so tenderly and so sweetly; he commanded his features so perfectly; he seemed to speak with such love and reasonableness.

Yet I would have you know that Master Richard did not yield by a hair's breadth in thought. He examined the temptation carefully, setting aside altogether the question as to whether I had spoken as this young man had said that I had. Whether I had spoken so or not made no difference. It was this that he was bidden to do, to say that he had erred in his tidings, to confess that they were not from G.o.d; to be a faithless messenger to our Lord.

He examined this, then, looking carefully at all parts of the temptation. [Sir John appends at this point two or three paragraphs, distinguishing between the observing of a temptation of thought and the yielding to it. He instances Christ's temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane.]....

At the end Master Richard opened his eyes and looked steadily upon the young man's face.