"Ah, the dear father, he told me 'twas God's will, and that the blessed dust had drifted the lad straight to heaven, where he would be singing next King David like any lord. So he came and buried the boy, and there was an end on't." Igraine for the moment felt heavy about the eyes. "I should like to see him there in his little white stole," she said. "Do you know, goodman, why so many children die?" "Faith, madame, I have no learning," said the fellow with a dumb stare. "Because the great God loves to have children laughing for love of him in heaven." "Is't so?" "That is why he took your boy." The man's face brightened with a new dignity. "Little Rual was ever a gentle child," he said. "I must tell my woman; it will just make her happy." "I will pray for her health." "God bless you, holy lady, you have a wise, kind heart." Igraine blushed, but said nothing. Presently the man stopped his horses, and pointed her to a little path that led, he said, to the hermitage. He helped Igraine out of the cart, and knelt on the road for her to give him a blessing. Igraine had a Latin phrase or two from Avangel, and the benediction was earnest enough in spirit, though it lacked genuine authority. Then she took the path through trees, and left the man standing cap in hand by his waggon. Her brief ride with him had done her heart good. A mile's walk through unkempt pastures and straggling thickets brought her to an open dale set beneath the shoulder of a wooded hill. On the grass slope over against her she saw the hermitage--a grey cell of unfaced stone standing in a garden in a grove of ancient thorns. By the rivulet that ran half hid by undergrowth a figure in a brown cassock was drawing water. Passing down over the water, Igraine overtook the recluse halfway up the slope to the hermitage garden. She remarked his bald head fringed with a mournful halo of hair, his stooping shoulders, his ungainly weak-kneed gait. Hearing her tread behind him he turned a tanned face to her, a face that brought forth a smile of brotherly greeting at sight of a nun. Igraine, by way of creating good feeling, took his water pot and carried it for him, pleading youth in extenuation of the service.