"Some of the clever ones are in England," Wilfrid answered. "They are doing good work in glass, I know, and in carven stone, and some other things, but that is mostly for the rich abbeys. I shall never be aught but a potter--but I will be as good a one as I can." Therefore Wilfrid took scrip and staff and went on pilgrimage to France, and there he saw things which made him sure that men had not lost the love of beauty out of the world. But he could hear of no master potters who made anything like the deep red Roman ware. After a year of wandering he came back, full of new plans, and with many tales to tell; but he told Edwitha that in all his travels he had seen nothing which was better worth looking at than her little Roman bowl. [Illustration: "'HOW BEAUTIFUL IT IS!' HE EXCLAIMED"--_Page 192_] SONG OF THE TAPESTRY WEAVERS All among the furze-bush, round the crystal dewpond, Feed the silly sheep like a cloud upon the down. Come safely home to croft, bear fleeces white and soft, Then we'll send the wool-wains to fair London Town. All in the dawnlight, white as a snowdrift Lies the wool a-waiting the spindle and the wheel. Sing, wheel, right cheerily, while I pace merrily,-- Knot by knot the thread runs on the busy reel. All in the sunshine, gay as a garden, Lie the skeins for weaving, the blue and gold and red. Fly, shuttle, merrily, in and out cheerily, Making all the woof bright with a rainbow thread. All in the noontide, wend we to market,-- Hear the folk a-chaffering like jackdaws up and down. Master, give ear to me, here's cloth for you to see, Fit for a canopy in fair London Town. All in the twilight sweet with the hearth-smoke, Homeward we go riding while the vesper bells ring. Southdown or Highland Scot, Fleming or Huguenot, Weaving our tapestries we shall serve our King! XVI LOOMS IN MINCHEN LANE HOW CORNELYS BAT, THE FLEMISH WEAVER, BEFRIENDED A BLACK SHEEP AND SAVED HIS WOOL It was in the early springtime, when lambs are frisking like rabbits upon the tender green grass, and all the land is like a tapestry of blue and white and gold and pink and green. Robert Edrupt, as he rode westward from London on his homeward way, felt that he had never loved his country quite so well as now. He had gone with a flock of English sheep to northern Spain, and come back in the same ship with the Spanish jennets which the captain took in exchange. On one of those graceful half-Arabian horses he was now riding, and on another, a little behind him, rode a swarthy, black-haired and black-eyed youngster in a sheepskin tunic, who looked about him as if all that he saw were strange.