On another panel sat the Virgin Mary with the Christ-child on her knee; he pressed his mother’s chin with the one hand and held an apple in the other. Beside them stood St. Sunniva and St. Christina. They bowed in lovely wise from their waists, their faces were the fairest red and white and they had golden hair and golden crowns. Brother Edwin steadied himself with the left hand on the right wrist, and painted leaves and roses on the crowns. “The dragon is all too small, methinks,” said Kristin, looking at her holy namesake’s picture. “It looks not as though it could swallow up the maiden.” “And that it could not either,” said Brother Edwin. “It was not bigger. Dragons and all such-like that serve the devil, seem great only so long as fear is in ourselves. But if a man seek God fervently and with all his soul so that his longing wins into his strength, then does the devil’s power suffer at once such great downfall that his tools become small and powerless—dragons and evil spirits sink down and become no bigger than sprites and cats and crows. You see that the whole mountain St. Sunniva was in is no larger than that she can wrap it within the skirt of her gown.” “But were they not in the caves then,” asked Kristin, “St. Sunniva and the Selje-men? Is not that true?” The monk twinkled at her and smiled again: “’Tis both true and untrue. It seemed so to the folk who found the holy bodies. And true it is that it seemed so to Sunniva and the Selje-men, for they were humble and thought only that the world is stronger than all sinful mankind, and they thought not that they themselves were stronger than the world, because they loved it not. But had they but known it, they could have taken all the hills and slung them forth into the sea like so many pebbles. No one, nor anything, can harm us child, save what we fear or love.” “But if a body doth not fear nor love God?” asked Kristin, affrighted. The monk took her yellow hair in his hand, bent Kristin’s head back gently and looked down into her face; his eyes were wide open and blue. “There is no man nor woman, Kristin, who does not love and fear God, but ’tis because our hearts are divided twixt love of God and fear of the devil and fondness for the world and the flesh, that we are unhappy in life and death. For if a man had not any yearning after God and God’s being, then should he thrive in hell, and ’twould be we alone who would not understand that there he had gotten what his heart desired. For there the fire would not burn him if he did not long for coolness, nor would he feel the torment of the serpents’ bite, if he knew not the yearning after peace.” Kristin looked up in his face; she understood none of all this. Brother Edwin went on: