a leather band. He went barefoot, but carried
a great hat on his shoulders when he walked. He moved slowly at such
times, and bore himself upright. His hands were fine and slender, and
were burned brown like his face and his throat.

I tell you that I have never seen such a wonderful beauty in mortal man;
and his soul was yet more lovely. It is no wonder that God's Majesty
delighted in him, and that the saints came to walk with him. He was
like neither man nor woman. He had the grey eyes of a woman, the mouth
and chin of a man, the hands of a matron, and the figure of a strong
virgin. I was always a little man, as you know, and when I walked with
him, as I did sometimes, the top of my cap came just beneath his ear.

Master Richard, as I have said, was seated now on his stool, with his
knees together, and his hands gripping the sides of his seat. His chin
was a little thrust out, and he was as still as a stock. This I knew,
was the manner in which sometimes he entered into strong contemplation;
and I knew, too, that he would neither hear me nor see me till he moved.
So I watched him a moment or two, and I grew yet more afraid as I
watched; for this is what I saw:

Down from his temples across his cheeks ran little drops of sweat on to
his brown frock, and that though it was a cool evening, and his spade
was hung on its peg beneath the window. (It was the spade that you have
seen in the church with a cross-handle polished by his holy hands.)

I looked for a while, and I grew yet more afraid. It seemed to me that
there was somewhat in the cell that I could not see. I looked up at the
window but there was nothing there but the still green hazel leaves; I
looked at his bed, at the smooth mud walls and floor, at the domed roof,
and, through the hole in the centre, where the smoke escaped when he
made a fire, I could see leaves again and the evening sky. Yet the place
was full of something; there was something of energy or conflict, I knew
not which: some person was striving there.

Then I was suddenly so much afraid that I dared not stay, and I went
back again along the path, and walked at the lower end of the meadow
beside the stream.

Of the Word from God that came to Master Hermit: and of his setting out

_Vias tuas, Domine, demonstra mihi: et semitas tuas educe me._

Shew, O Lord, Thy ways to me: and teach me Thy paths.--_Ps. xxiv. 4._

II

There are, as you have learned from me, and I from Master Ri