But he told of his own honesty how cold voices and vision left his heart, how unamazed his mind, and that he could but think them dreams of his sickness somehow bodied forth. The Prior looked sternly and shook his head. “They come truly, we hold! But it is seen that thou art as dull as ditch water--black ember that will not respond--tongue that hath lost taste--soul that will not be fervent! Scourge thyself into meekness to heaven--into that glow that will take whatever cometh!” Richard Englefield plied the scourge. He was weak now and his eyes dazzled, and truly phantasies pageanted before him in sound and line and colour. He saw images, and sometimes they were beautiful and sometimes deadly. He heard sounds, and some were honey-sweet and others grating or mocking. But still said his being, “They come from no High Reality. Have I not, being artist, always in some sort heard and seen? O God, O God! help thou me who am dead!” Prior Matthew regarded him darkly. Westforest rode one day to Silver Cross, talked there with Abbot Mark. “There has been mistake! He is not your Friar Paul kind!” The Abbot’s pride arose. “For three years Silver Cross hath seen him one apart!” “Perhaps! He would not,” said Matthew sourly, “have far to go, as monks are in these days, to stand apart and above. My point is that you cannot make him ecstatic. So far it is beyond me to set the mill running! He hath been ill, and his body hath arrived at emaciation. I have given him that elixir you wot of. Usually it sets the fancy skipping, brews a kind of wild readiness at seeing, hearing! And, if I read him aright, he wants heaven to descend upon him. I provided him to hear and see one who told him he was Saint Willebrod. Brother Anselm, you know, whom I took from among the players, and is--God pardon us!--as dog to my hand--” He spread out his hands. The Abbot groaned. “The end that we propose is good!” “Assuredly it is! It all goes into the homely bag of homely deceits necessary in this poor world. But the end is that as yet we have done naught!” The Abbot sighed. “Could we take him into counsel?” “No!” “Then what shall we do? You have heard that Saint Leofric healed the French Knight? He gave candlesticks of pure gold. Shall we give it all up, Matthew?” “Not yet. If I could find his true heart and mind--then might we beckon appearances that corresponded. He seems interested in a far land and in somehow going there--and going has to be bodily, all of him! What appears will have to strike him down, like Saint Paul on Damascus road--clean him of doubt, be a blaze to him, a burning bush!” The Abbot sighed. Prior Matthew sat fixed, with cloudy brows, seeking inspiration.