"But, Father Wilfred! all those be easy enough." "Be they so, lad? How many times hast tried them?" "In good sooth, never tried I any of them," said Bertram honestly. "Then wait ere thou say so much." There was another pause; and then Bertram found another question. "Father Wilfred, what thinkest of Sir John de Wycliffe?" "I never brake bread with him, lad," said the monk, busy with the griffin. "But what thinkest?" "How should I know?" Evidently the illuminator did not mean to commit himself. "Is he a great man or a small?" "God wot," said the monk. "Hugh Calverley saith he is the greatest man that ever lived," said Bertram. "Greater than Saint John Baptist?" "His work is of the like sort," pursued Bertram meditatively. "'Tis preaching and reproving men of their sins." "God speed all His work!" said the monk. "Father, what didst after thy turning back from Holy Land?" "What all men do once a life. What thou wilt do." "Marry, what so?" "Why, I became a fool." "Father Wilfred! I counted thee alway a wise man." "A sorry blunder, lad," said Wilfred, putting in the griffin's teeth. "Wouldst say a Court fool?" "Nay--a worser fool than that." "How so?" "I trusted a woman," answered Wilfred,--bitterly, for him. "Father! hadst thou ever a lady-love?" Bertram's interest was intense at this juncture. "Go to, Bertram Lyngern!" answered the monk, looking up with a smile. "Be thy thoughts on lady-loves already? Nay, lad; she that I trusted was a kinswoman--no love. Little love in very deed was there betwixt us. And yet"--his voice altered suddenly--"I knew what that was too-- once." "And she mocked thee, trow?" asked Bertram, who expected a small sensation novel to spring out of this avowal. Wilfred worked in silence for a minute. Then he said in a low tone, "Forty years' violets have freshened and faded on her grave; nor one of all of them more fair ne sweet than she." But there was something in his manner which said, "Question me no further." And, curious as Bertram was, he obeyed the tacit request. "And what stood next in thy life, Father?" "This, lad," said the monk, touching his cowl. Bertram did not consider this by any means satisfactory. "Well! All said, Father Wilfred, we come back to the first matter. What wouldst thou do an' thou wert I?" "Soothly, that wis I not," said the illuminator rather drily. "What thou shouldst do an' thou wert I, might be easier gear." "Well--and that were?" "To set claws unto this griffin." "Now, Father Wilfred! My work is not to paint griffins." "What thy work is, do," replied the monk sententiously. "But 'tis sheer idlesse! 'Tis not work at all. It is but to wait till I am called to work." "The waiting is harder than the work," replied Wilfred, again laying down his pen. "If thou be well assured that waiting is thy work, wit thou that 'tis matter worthy of the wits of angels, for there is no work harder than to wait for God." "But 'tis not _work_, Father!"