"When Brother Anselm had obtained the prior's leave to try his
experiment he felt nervous and shrank from the task. He went down the
garden and looked at the trees that he had cut, and he felt more than
ever that a man was, as the monks said, not an apple-tree. Then he
examined the places which looked healthy and well, and he wondered
whether if he performed such an operation on the poor patient he also
would be healthy and well at the end of a week, and he shook his head
and felt nervous."

"If you please, Mr Brownsmith," I said, "I can't go on till you've
done, and I must hear the end."

He chuckled a little, and seating himself on a bushel basket which he
turned upside down, a couple of cats sprang in his lap, another got on
his shoulder, and he went on talking while I thrust an arm through one
of the rounds of the ladder, and leaned back against it as he went on.

"Well, Grant," he said, "Brother Anselm felt sorry now that he had leave
to perform his experiment, and he went slowly back to the cell and
talked to the poor swineherd, a fine handsome, young man with fair curly
brown hair and a skin as white as a woman's where the sun had not tanned
him.

"And he talked to him about how he felt; and the poor fellow said he
felt much better and much worse--that the pain had all gone, but that he
did not think he should ever be well any more.

"This set the brother thinking more and more, but he felt that he could
do nothing that day, and he waited till the next, lying awake all night
thinking of what he would do and how he would do it, till the cold time
about sunrise, when he had given up the idea in despair. But when he
saw the light coming in the east, with the glorious gold and orange
clouds, and then the bright sunshine of a new day, he began to think of
how sad it would be for that young man, cut down as he had been in a
moment, to be left to die when perhaps he might be saved. He thought,
too, about trees that had been cut years before, and which had been
healthy and well ever since, and that morning, feeling stronger in his
determination, he went to the cell where the patient lay, to talk to
him, and the first thing the poor fellow said was:--

"`Tell me the truth, please. I'm going to die, am I not?'

"The young monk was silent.

"`I know it,' said the swineherd sadly. `I feel it now.'

"Brother Anselm looked at him sadly for a few minutes and then said to
him:--

"`I must not deceive you at