ame
back his own wife Phillis, the countess in her castle, did not know
the poor travel-worn hermit, who came daily to seek his dole of
bread at her hands along with many beggars and much poor. But at
last, when he lay a-dying in his cave in the rock, he sent for her
by a secret sign known but to them twain. And she came with great
speed, for she knew it was her lord who had sent for her; and they
had many sweet and holy words together before he gave up the ghost,
his head lying on her bosom.

The old story known to most people from their childhood was all new
and fresh to Philip. He did not quite believe in the truth of it,
because the fictitious nature of the histories of some of the other
Champions of Christendom was too patent. But he could not help
thinking that this one might be true; and that Guy and Phillis might
have been as real flesh and blood, long, long ago, as he and Sylvia
had even been. The old room, the quiet moonlit quadrangle into which
the cross-barred casement looked, the quaint aspect of everything
that he had seen for weeks and weeks; all this predisposed Philip to
dwell upon the story he had just been reading as a faithful legend
of two lovers whose bones were long since dust. He thought that if
he could thus see Sylvia, himself unknown, unseen--could live at her
gates, so to speak, and gaze upon her and his child--some day too,
when he lay a-dying, he might send for her, and in soft words of
mutual forgiveness breathe his life away in her arms. Or perhaps--and
so he lost himself, and from thinking, passed on to dreaming.
All night long Guy and Phillis, Sylvia and his child, passed in and
out of his visions; it was impossible to make the fragments of his
dreams cohere; but the impression made upon him by them was not the
less strong for this. He felt as if he were called to Monkshaven,
wanted at Monkshaven, and to Monkshaven he resolved to go; although
when his reason overtook his feeling, he knew perfectly how unwise
it was to leave a home of peace and tranquillity and surrounding
friendliness, to go to a place where nothing but want and
wretchedness awaited him unless he made himself known; and if he
did, a deeper want, a more woeful wretchedness, would in all
probability be his portion.

In the small oblong of looking-glass hung against the wall, Philip
caught the reflection of his own face, and laughed scornfully at the
sight. The thin hair lay upon his temples in the flakes that betoken