general order in his diocese forbidding parish priests to bury the bodies of grown persons, if he were by to do it. If it were a case of good life, the more need to honour; if of an evil life, such would all the more yearn for greater succour. So he went to all, and if they were poor he ordered his almoner to find the lights and other requirements. Any funeral would bring him straight from his horse to pray at the bier. If he had no proper book wherein he might read without halting (and his eyes waxed dim at the last) he would stand near the officiant, chaunt the psalms with him, say the amens, and be clerk, almost a laic. If he had the right book, he would be priest, say the prayers, use the holy water, swing the censer, cast on the mould, then give shrift and benison and go on his way. If the place were a large city and many bodies came for burial he did just the same until all were finished. Potentates expecting to eat bread with him were often vexed and complained at these delays; but, host or guest, he had more appetite for holy than for social functions. King Richard at Rouen, like his father before him, with all the Court and the Royal Family, when they invited Hugh to table, had to keep fasting while Hugh performed these higher duties without clipping or diminishing the office. When the king's servants chafed, and would have spurred him on, he would say, "No need to wait for us. Let him eat in the Lord's name;" and to his friends, "It is better for the king to eat without us, than for our humility to pass the Eternal King's order unfulfilled." Near Argentan, in Normandy, he once found a new grave by the roadside and learnt that a beggar-boy lay there. The priest had let him lie there, because there was no fee and no one would carry him to the church-yard. Hugh was deeply grieved, said the office himself, and rattled that priest pretty smartly to his bishop for denying Christian burial to the penniless and needy.