with St. Augustine's explanations that eight (the number next to
seven, the number of creation and rest) signifies the consummation of
all things and Doomsday. Four is the number of the outer world, with its
seasons and quarters; three of the soul of man, the reflection of God;
and eight, therefore, which comes after the union of these, is judgment
and eternal life. Hugh was, no doubt, his own architect (if such a word
is not an anachronism here), but he employed Somerset builders, who left
the mark of English custom upon this otherwise peculiar and continental
looking building. The leper window has been noticed above. The only
other building at Witham which pretends to bear traces of Hugh's hand is
the guest house, and this, as we have seen, may be at bottom the very
house where Hugh hob-a-nobbed with King Henry.

The same style, the same severity, the same sacramental feeling no doubt
marked the Conventual Church, and it is sad to think what great and
pathetic memories perished with its destruction. If only the pigstyes
and barns built out of these old stones could have been the richer for
what was lost in the transit, they would have been the richest of their
kind. For Hugh turned to this his first great work in the house of
Martha with a peculiar relish, which was that of a lover more than of a
man who had merely heaped up stones against the wind. If Lincoln was
his Leah, Witham was his dear Rachael. Hither he was translated, like
Enoch or Elijah, from a vexing world for a time every year. The two
parts of the Charterhouse were the embodiments of "justice and
innocence." Here was "the vine of the Lord of Hosts." His cell was kept
for him, and while all the world was hotly harvesting he was laying up
here his spiritual stores. Here his face seemed to burn with the horned
light of Moses, when he appeared in public. His words were like fire and
wine and honey, but poised with discretion. Yet he never became a
fanatical monk, nor like Baldwin, whom the Pope addressed as "most
fervent monk, clever abbot, lukewarm bishop, and slack archbishop." He
warned his monastic brethren here that the great question at doom is
not, Were you monk or hermit? but Did you show yourself truly Christian?
The name is useless, or positively baleful, unless a man has the
threefold mark--_caritas in corde; veritas in ore; castitas in
corpore_--of love in the heart, truth on the lips, pureness in the body.
Here he told them that chaste wedlock