“Well, not as far as Somerville Hall. That may not be. But there is the ruined farm that bears toward Silver Cross. Put on country dress and darken your face, and David and his wife who live there will take you in--Alice or Joan. I will speak to them. You may bide there until we are less good.” There was silence. A red coal fell with a silken sound. Out of window all was white and still. “I despair,” said Morgen Fay. “Not for this danger nor for that but I--I myself. I despair.” “If there were any way to buy Silver Cross--” He sat and looked into the fire. The snow fell thick, thick and white. It hid the bridge, it hid Saint Leofric, it hid the castle of Montjoy. It wrapped the town. Dusk came to help it. Snow and night wrapped the time and place. In the night it ceased to snow and cleared. Winter stars and purple dawn and saffron day. The sun sprang up and beneath him lay a diamond earth. Somerville, riding up Wander, pulled his hat over eyes, so dazzling were the light shafts. Out from the road that turned aside to Silver Cross came upon his mule the Prior of Westforest, attended by two monks. There was greeting. “Ride on with me to Westforest, Sir Robert!” They rode together and when they came to Westforest Somerville dismounted and went with Prior Matthew into his parlour. CHAPTER X Brother Anselm had been transferred, it seemed, from Westforest to Silver Cross. Richard Englefield found him here, and in the cell that had been Brother Oswald’s. The latter, with Brothers Peter, Allen and Timothy, were gone into dormitory. Only Brother Norbert was left. In the six cells dwelled Brother Anselm, Brother Norbert and himself. There had been other changes. A great rood was put up in his cell. Broad and dark, a poor wooden Christ hanging thereon, it overspread a third of one side of the cell. It stood there, shadowy against a shadowy wall, as all the cell was shadowy,--the thin winter light stealing in by day, the one taper by night. Richard Englefield the goldsmith had seen many a great rood in England and France and Italy. He had seen poor carving, rude and struggling thought and unskilful hand, hardly attaining to truth, hardly to strength, hardly to beauty. But beauty and strength and truth had been longed for. This carving, this rood, showed him no such thing. “Not the way it is done, but the dream is wrong.” It grew faintly horrible to him. The long winter days, the knees upon stone. “O God, O God! Where is light, where is meaning? In me is wold and thicket and bog and the stars put out!” Only the picture stayed with him, made somehow significance, somehow warmth. Now it paled and now it glowed.