The Church was decked with fair flowers, white tapers burnt like stars before the Altar, a sweet smoke of incense went up to the rafters, the clergy boys sang loudly and clearly ‘Alleluia.’ Lit by candleshine, with white lilies round her feet, stood God’s Mother clasping her Little Son, and He stretched His little arms out and smiled towards her through the odorous mist. Meg had been overcome by faintness once or twice by the way, but now all her mortal powers concentrated themselves on the act of devotion. As she listened to the words of the Priest her eyes closed, and she turned her face upwards to Heaven like as she had been one born blind. Her lips moved at the responses but made no sound, except, when the sacring bell rang, a deep sob burst from her and shook her weakened frame from head to foot. In her turn she would have gone toward the Altar to receive the Blessed Sacrament but for her bodily weakness she might not, so her husband aided her upon the one side and Hob upon the other, and the three of them knelt together thus side by side. Then came the Priest and said, ‘This is the cup of My Blood which is shed for you,’ and placed the Sacred Wafer upon her tongue. As she received and swallowed it a blissful light as of a great peace shone out of her countenance; she lifted up her hands joined together towards Heaven, and cried in a clear joyful voice that all might hear, ‘Jesu!’ She fell back into Gilbert’s arms, and the Priest, gazing upon her face, knew she was dead. They began to bear her away, and, as they did so, Gilbert saw that Hob of the Cross wept. He turned to him with a right steadfast and glad countenance and cried in a joyful voice, ‘Weep not, dear Hob, the Lord hath judged His servant worthy to depart in peace.’ The Life and Death of Saint Simon of Blewberry When folk come into Roodborough for the market ’tis easy to tell the Blewberry people from all other. For these, when they will take oath in their talk, say ‘By blessed Peter,’ or ‘By Saint Thomas of Canterbury,’ or ‘By Saint George,’ but folk from Blewberry swear never but by Saint Simon, and this Saint Simon is not the Holy Apostle whose festival we keep with Saint Jude’s in the month of October, but is indeed a Blewberry Saint born and bred.