owers he had daily gathered from the Norman
fields, and that Brother Stephen, by the magic of his art, had made
immortal.

Indeed the little boy fairly blinked as he looked at the sparkling
beauty of those pages where the blossoms were to live on, through the
centuries, bright and beautiful and unharmed by wind or rain or the
driving snow, that even then was covering up all the bare frost-smitten
meadows without.

And so Gabriel turned over page after page shining with gold and purple
and rose-colour, till he came to the very last of the text; and then he
saw that there was yet one page more, and on turning over this he read
these words:

"I, Brother Stephen, of the Abbey of St. Martin-de-Bouchage, made this
book; and for every initial letter and picture and border of flowers
that I have herein wrought, I pray the Lord God to have compassion upon
some one of my grievous sins!"

This was written in beautifully, and all around it was painted a
graceful border like braided ribbons of blue.

Now in Brother Stephen's time, when any one finished an especially
beautiful illumination of any part of the Bible, it was quite customary
for the artist to add, at the end, a little prayer. Indeed, no one can
make a really beautiful thing without loving the work; and those
old-time artist-monks took such delight in the flowery pages they
painted, that they felt sure the dear Lord himself could not help but be
pleased to have his words made so beautiful, and that he would so grant
the little prayer at the end of the book, because of the loving labour
that had gone before.

As Gabriel again read over Brother Stephen's last page, it set him to
thinking; and a little later, as he walked home in the frosty dusk, he
thought of it again.

It was true, he said to himself, that all the beautiful written and
painted work on King Louis's book had been done by Brother Stephen's
hands,--and yet,--and yet,--had not he, too, helped? Had he not gathered
the thorny hawthorn, and pricked his fingers, and spent days and days
making the ink? Had he not, week after week, ground the colours and the
gold till his arms ached, and his hands were blistered? Had he not made
the glue, and prepared the parchment, and ruled the lines (and one had
to be _so_ careful not to blot them!), and brought all the flowers for
the borders?

Surely, he thought, though he had not painted any of its lovely pages,
yet he had done his little part to help make the book,