"My sins are neither blacker nor whiter than they have always been," he
said; "you know them all, my father."
"And you wish to leave us?" I cried.
He unclasped his hands and laid one on my knee. I was terrified at its
purity, but his face was turned away, and he said nothing.
I had never heard the wood at that time of the evening so silent as it
was then. It was the time when, as the lax monks say, the birds say
mattins (but the strict observants call it compline), but there was
neither mattins nor compline then in the green wood. It was all in a
great hush, and the shadows from the trees fifty paces away had crept up
and were at our feet.
Then he spoke again.
"Tell me what your soul tells you," he said.
I put my hand on his brown head; I could not speak. Then he rose at
once, and stood smiling and looking on me, and the sunlight made a
splendour in his hair, as it were his heavenly crown.
"Thank you, my father," he said, though I had not spoken one word.
Then he turned and went into the hut, and left me to look upon the green
woods through my tears, and to listen to a mavis that had begun to sing
in one of the may-trees. I knew he was gone to make ready.
* * * * *
The sun had quite gone down before he came out again, and the shadows
were like a veil over the land; only the yellow flowers burned hot like
candle flames before me.
He had four books in his hand and a little bottle, his hat on his
shoulders, and the wooden sandals on his feet that he had worn to walk
in four years before when he came to us. His little linen picture of the
five wounds was fastened over his breast with thorns. He carried across
his arm the second white-sleeved kirtle that he had, and his burse was
on his girdle. He held out two of the books to me.
"These are for you, my father," he said; "the book of hours and the
_Regula Heremitarum_ I shall take with me, and all the rest of the
mobills and the two other books I shall leave at our Lord's disposal,
except the bottle of Quintessence."