From the gold of the wheat harvest to the picking of red apples no great time passes, yet in those few weeks the people began to scoff openly at the healing powers of Denise. She had been brought in with such quaint pomp and ceremony, with such singing, and such a show of blossom on the boughs, that folk had looked for a wonderful fruiting, and for an especial blessedness that should show itself in each man’s house. Denise, poor wench, had come into the wilds of life, to find primitive things dragging her beautiful altruism into ruins. She had lost her wings and could no longer soar, because of the earthliness that grew more apparent to her day by day. Everything that she attempted failed with her, and faith in her own power dwindled out of her heart. Long ago she had noticed the prophetic change in Dom Silvius’s attitude. He was suspicious, grieved, hesitatory, always hoping for some lucky miracle, some splendid coincidence that might fire the beacon of his imaginings. He had boasted a little of this Virgin Saint out of the woods, and the eyes of some of the Brethren were beginning to twinkle. One sunny day early in October Dom Silvius went down to the stews to fish. There happened to be some of the younger monks there, and Guimar the hosteler, a long, lean quiz of a man whom Silvius hated. “Brother,” said he to the almoner. “Have you come to fish?” Dom Silvius answered the question by settling his stool with great deliberation at the edge of the pond. Guimar glanced at the rest. “My Brothers,” he said. “See, here is Silvius come a-fishing. Let us kneel and pray for him, and perchance his saint may catch a miracle!” They all laughed at the joke, all save Silvius, who bit his lips. And from that moment his pride began to work like a slow poison in him, filling him with a hatred of Denise. Once only, and that in August, Father Grimbald had come stalking up the hill to Virgin’s Croft, when the people were busy with the harvest, and there were none to see his coming. What he said to Denise, and she to him, no man knew, for Grimbald held his peace concerning it. But Denise wept when he had gone, bitter, impassioned tears that welled up out of her heart. Grimbald’s brow was heavy with a thunder cloud of thought as he trudged home to Goldspur over the hills. He opened and closed his great fists as he went, as though yearning to smite something, or to take an enemy by the throat. He had been unable to learn much from Denise, save that she seemed unhappy, and that she had left Goldspur because of the violence of the times. Grimbald had his own suspicions, but speak them he could not, though he was troubled within himself for Denise’s sake. He knew that it had not been a matter of vainglory with her, a desire to be flattered by the worship of a wider world. Oswald’s tale of the Devil on the Black Horse loomed largely in the background of Grimbald’s mind. Denise had hidden something from him. Of that Grimbald felt assured.