Now when more than three and a half centuries had gone by, and Agelwyn the Great-hearted was Abbot, there was a Saxon noble, young and dissolute, who had been stricken by the Yellow Plague, and, after three days' sickness, had been abandoned by his friends and followers in what seemed to be his last agony. For the Yellow Plague was a sickness so ghastly and dreadful that men called it the Yellow Death, and fled from it as swiftly as they might. But in the dead and dark of the third night a beautiful Child, crowned with roses and bearing in his hand a rose, had come to the dying thane and said: "Now mayest thou see that the best the world can give--call it by what name thou wilt and prize it at its utmost worth--is nothing more than these: wind and smoke and a dream and a flower. But though all have fled from thee and left thee to die alone in grievous plight, this night thou shalt not die." Then he was bidden to rise on the morrow--"for strength shall be given thee," said the Child--and travel with the sun westward till he came to the Abbey of Egwin, and there he must tell the Abbot all that had befallen him. "And the good Abbot will receive thee among his sons," said the Child; "and after that, in a little while, thou shalt go on a journey, and then again in a little while shalt come to me." On the morrow Rheinfrid the thane rose from his bed hale and strong, but his whole nature was changed; and he made no more account of life and of all that makes life sweet--as honour and wealth and joy and use and the love of man and woman--than one makes of wind and smoke and a dream and a flower; and all that he greatly desired was to undertake the journey which had been foretold, and to see once more the Child of the Roses. Westward he rode with the sun and came at nightfall to the Abbey of Eovesholme; and there he told Agelwyn the Abbot the story of his wild life and his sickness and the service that had been laid upon him. The Abbot embraced him, saying, "Son, welcome art thou to our house, and thy home shall it be till the time comes for thy journey." For a whole year Rheinfrid was a novice in the house, and when the year had gone by he took the vows. In the presence of the brotherhood he cast himself on the pavement before the high altar, and the pall of the dead was laid over him, and the monks sang the dirge of the dead, for now he was indeed dying to this world. And from his head they cut the long hair, and clothed him in the habit of a monk, and henceforth he was done with all earthly things and was one of themselves.