Again he went away. The next day, suddenly, while he was turning in his hands a bar of silver, his thoughts for a moment ran gold. He was back with a certain day in his stone workroom at Silver Cross and he was making a cup for Abbot Mark to give to a bishop. The great picture was in his thoughts, the Blessed among women. There were rolling fields and the villages of Palestine. Palestine? Everywhere she was, she was everywhere! That day had been two years ago. Now again to-day he saw that everywhere she was, that she was everywhere. Everywhere! In all realms, upper and lower, afar and near, great and small. Everywhere. Who had hurt her? No one and nothing. Naught! Who had hurt him? No one. That night he saw a great thorny field and two wanderers. Each had a great burden on his shoulders and each a staff. There seemed a path of pilgrimage. And now one came full upon it and pursued it and now the other. But they were not together, and there seemed a desolateness. Each fell away into the thorns and came again with toil. The mist closed all away. Again Richard Englefield prayed. “If it be in God that we are together--” Night passed, day passed. Night again in the street of the smiths. A light through the window, a cry in the street, a bell that leaped into clanging. Fire! Fire! Diccon Dawn hurrying on clothing, went with the rest. It seemed to be on the water side and to the eastward,--a great fire. When they came to the Thames they saw that it was a stretch of old buildings, a maze where the poor lived, together with seafaring folk. So joined were the houses that it might be one, or they might be ten. Old Anchor--Old Anchor! The sky was murk and flame, any face might be read; the fire-ocean leaped in breakers, roared, licked up and sucked under. All the air was sound, all the bells were ringing, all the heart was bursting. Middle Forest! A heap of fagots by town cross. Old Anchor, and many heroic things done that night by men and women and children. But a man, a goldsmith, entered farthest, endured longest, brought forth in his arms whom he had gone to seek, out of the heart of it. “Is she dead? No! Dead with the smoke, and fire has touched her arms and her breast and her sides. Who is she? The man’s sister. Where will he take her? He will carry her through the street to his house. Diccon Dawn, a goldsmith. He will nurse her there--oh, tenderly, tenderly.” It was so. He nursed here there, oh, tenderly, and she came back to life and to strength through much suffering. “It hurts? I would that I could take that!” “Oh, aye, it hurts sore! But I will keep it and bear it and see it change.” “So much more I know about thee than I used to know! Thou hast courage.” “So much more I know of thee. Thou hast strength, patience. If I moan with the pain, it helps me to utter it.” “See thou, it is meant for us to be together.” CHAPTER XXVI