"And what will be your message," I asked, "when you come to the King?" "Our Lord will tell it me when I come thither," he said. We went through the village that lay dark and fast asleep. I wished him to go to some of the houses, and bid the folks good-bye, but he would not. "I bear them, too, wherever I go," he said. After we had adored God Almighty in the church, [That is, God present in the Blessed Sacrament.] and I had shriven the young man and blessed him, we went out and stood under the lychgate where his body afterwards rested. It was a clear night of stars and as silent as was once heaven for the space of half-an-hour. The philomels had given over their singing near a month before, and it was not the season for stags to bray; and those, as you know, are the principal sounds that we hear at night. We stood a long time listening to the silence. I knew well what was in my heart, and I knew presently what was in his. He was thinking on his soul. He turned to me after a while, and I could see the clear pallour of his face and the line of his lips and eyes all set in his heavy hair. "Do you know the tale of the Persian king, Sir John?" I told him No; he had many of such tales. I do not know where he had read them. "There was once a king who had the open eyes, and he looked into heaven and hell. He saw there two friends whom he had known in the flesh; the one was a hermit, and the other another king. The hermit was in hell, and the king in heaven. When he asked the reason of this, one told him that the hermit was in hell because of his consorting with the king, and the king in heaven because of his consorting with the hermit." I understood him, but I said nothing. "Pray for me then, Sir John," said Master Richard. Then we kissed one another, and he was gone without another word along the white road. How Master Richard fared: how he heard Mass in Saint Pancras' Church: how he came to Westminster: and of his colloquy with the Ankret _Abyssus abyssum invocat: in voce cataractarum tuarum_. Deep calleth on deep: at the noise of Thy flood-gates.--_Ps. xli. 8._ III The tale of his journey and of his coming to London he told me when I saw him again at the end. He spoke to me for over an hour, and I think that I have remembered near every word, but I cannot write down the laughter and the tears that were in his voice as he told me. As he went along the road beneath the trees and the stars, carrying his kirtle, with his books and other things in his burse, and his hat on his shoulders, he was both happy and sorry.