“And now to find a drop of water,” said he, picking up a small brush. “Come to my upper cloister. The sun is on the leads still,” said the Abbot, rising. They followed him there. Half way along, a drip from a gutter had made a greenish puddle in a worn stone. Very carefully, John dropped a drop of it into the smaller hole of the compass-leg, and, steadying the apparatus on a coping, worked the screw in the compass-joint, screwed the cylinder, and swung the swivel of the mirror till he was satisfied. “Good!” He peered through the thing. “My Shapes are all here. Now look, Father! If they do not meet your eye at first, turn this nicked edge here, left or right-handed.” “I have not forgotten,” said the Abbot, taking his place. “Yes! They are here--as they were in my time--my time past. There is no end to them, I was told.... There _is_ no end!” “The light will go. Oh, let me look! Suffer me to see, also!” the Friar pleaded, almost shouldering Stephen from the eye-piece. The Abbot gave way. His eyes were on time past. But the Friar, instead of looking, turned the apparatus in his capable hands. “Nay, nay,” John interrupted, for the man was already fiddling at the screws. “Let the Doctor see.” Roger of Salerno looked, minute after minute. John saw his blue-veined cheek-bones turn white. He stepped back at last, as though stricken. “It is a new world--a new world and--Oh, God Unjust!--I am old!” “And now Thomas,” Stephen ordered. John manipulated the tube for the Infirmarian, whose hands shook, and he too looked long. “It is Life,” he said presently in a breaking voice. “No Hell! Life created and rejoicing--the work of the Creator. They live, even as I have dreamed. Then it was no sin for me to dream. No sin--O God--no sin!” He flung himself on his knees and began hysterically the _Benedicite omnia Opera_. “And now I will see how it is actuated,” said the Friar from Oxford, thrusting forward again. “Bring it within. The place is all eyes and ears,” said Stephen. They walked quietly back along the leads, three English counties laid out in evening sunshine around them; church upon church, monastery upon monastery, cell after cell, and the bulk of a vast cathedral moored on the edge of the banked shoals of sunset. When they were at the after-table once more they sat down, all except the Friar who went to the window and huddled bat-like over the thing. “I see! I see!” he was repeating to himself. “He’ll not hurt it,” said John. But the Abbot, staring in front of him, like Roger of Salerno, did not hear. The Infirmarian’s head was on the table between his shaking arms. John reached for a cup of wine. “It was shown to me,” the Abbot was speaking to himself, “in Cairo, that man stands ever between two Infinities--of greatness and littleness. Therefore, there is no end--either to life--or----” “And _I_ stand on the edge of the grave,” snarled Roger of Salerno. “Who pities _me_?”