"What is that which you bear on your breast?" "It is the five wounds, my father." "Tell me of your life. Are you yet in the way of perfection?" Then the two solitaries talked together a long while; I could not understand all that Master Richard told to me; and I think there was much that he did not tell me, but it was of matters that I am scarce worthy to name, of open visions and desolations, and the darkness of the fourth Word of our Saviour on the rood; and again of scents and sounds and melodies such as those of which Master Rolle has written; and above all of charity and its degrees, for without charity all the rest is counted as dung. _Avemaria_ rang at sunset, but they did not hear it, and at the end the holy man within crept nearer and raised himself. "I must see your face, brother," he said. "It may be then that I shall know the message that your soul bears to the King." Master Richard came out of his heavenly swoon then, and saw the face close to his own, and what he said of it to me I dare not tell you, but he bitterly reproached himself that he had ever doubted whether this were a man of God or no. As he turned his own face this way and that, that the failing light might fall upon it, he said that beneath him in the little street there was a crowd assembled, all silent and watching the heavenly colloquy. When he looked again, questioning, at the holy old man, he saw that the other's face was puckered with thought and that his lips pouted through the long-falling hair. Then it disappeared, and a grunting voice came out of the dark, but the sound of it was as if the old man wept. "I do not know the message, brother. Our Lord has not shewed it to me, but He has shewed me this--that soon you will not need to wear His wounds. That I have to say. _Oremus pro invicem._" ["Let us pray for one another."] * * * * * The crowd pressed close upon Master Richard as he came down from the window, and, going in the midst of them in silence, he came to saint Peter's gate where the black monks dwell, and was admitted by the porter. How Master Richard saw the King in Westminster Hall: and of the Mass at Saint Edward's Altar _Revelabit condensa: et in templo ejus omnes dicent gloriam._ He will discover the thick woods: and in His temple all shall speak His glory.--_Ps. xxviii. 9._ IV