at stove and the wide hearth facing him were fed with
mighty logs day and night.

In this fearful heat the sweat stood on my brow so soon as I crossed the
threshold, and if I tarried in the chamber I soon lacked breath. The sick
man's speech was scarce to be heard, and as to all that Master Ulsenius
told us of the seat of his ill, and of how it was gnawing him to death I
would fain be silent. Instead of that Lenten mockery of the foot washing
he now would do the hardest penance, and there was scarce a saint in the
Calendar to whom he had not offered gifts or ever he died.

A Dominican friar was ever in his chamber, telling the rosary for him and
doing him other ghostly service, especially in the night season, when he
was haunted by terrible restlessness. Nothing eased him as a remedy
against this so well as the presence of a woman to his mind. But of all
those to whom, on many a Christmas eve, he had made noble gifts, few came
a second time after they had once been in that furnace; or, if they did,
it would be no more than to come and depart forthwith. Cousin Maud could
endure to stay longest with him; albeit afterwards she would need many a
glass of strong waters to strengthen her heart.

As for me, each time when I came home from my grand-uncle's with pale
cheeks she would forbid me ever to cross his threshold more: but when his
bidding was brought me she likewise was moved to compassion, and suffered
me to obey.

Nevertheless, if I had not been more than common strong, thank the
Saints, long sitting with the sick man would of a certainty have done me
a mischief, for body and soul had much to endure. Meseemed that pain had
loosened the tongue of that hitherto wordless old man, and whereas he had
ever held his head high above all men, he would now abase himself before
the humblest. He would stay any man or woman who would tarry, to tell of
all his sufferings, and of what he endured in mind and body. His
confessor had indeed forbidden him to complain of the evil wherewith
Heaven had punished him, but none could hinder him from bewailing the
evil he had committed in his sinfulness and vanity. And his
self-accusings were so manifold and fearful, that I was fain to believe
his declaration that all he had ever thought or done that was good was,
as it were, buried; and that nought but the ill he had suffered and
committed was left and still had power over him. The death-stroke he had
dealt all unwittingly, in heedless pas