h he.

"Diversely, Father," I made answer. "Some days my pen will run apace,
but on others it laggeth like oxen at plough when the ground is heavy
with rain."

"The ground was full heavy when I entered," saith he, "for the plough
was standing still."

I laughed. "So it was, trow. But I do not think I was idle, Father; I
was but meditating."

"Wise meditations, that be fruitful in good works, be far away from
idlesse," quoth he. "And on what wert thou thinking thus busily, my
daughter?"

"On the strange ways of men and women, Father."

"Did the list include Dame Cicely de Chaucombe?" saith Father Philip,
with one of his quiet smiles.

"No," I made answer. "I had not reached her."

"Or Philip de Edyngdon? Perchance thou hadst not reached him."

"Why, Father, I might never think of sitting in judgment on you. No, I
was thinking of some I had wist long ago: and in especial of Dame Isabel
the Queen, and other that were about her. What is it moveth folks to
love one another, or to hate belike?"

"There be but three things can move thee to aught, my daughter: God,
Satan, and thine own human heart."

"And my conscience?" said I.

"Men do oftentimes set down to conscience," saith he, "that which is
either God or Satan. The enlightened conscience of the righteous man
worketh as God's Holy Spirit move him. The defiled conscience of the
evil man listeneth to the promptings of Satan. And the seared
conscience is as dead, and moveth not at all."

"Father, can a man then kill his conscience?"

"He may lay it asleep for this life, daughter: may so crush it with
weights thereon laid that it is as though it had the sickness of palsy,
and cannot move limb. But I count, when this life is over, it shall
shake off the weight, and wake up, to a life and a torment that shall
never end."

"I marvel if she did," said I, rather to myself than him.

"Daughter," he made answer, "whoso _she_ be, let her be. God saith not
to thee, _He_, and _she_, but _I_, and _thou_. When Christ knocketh at
thy door, if thou open not, shall He take it as tideful answer that thou
wert full busy watching other folks' doors to see if they would open?"

"Yet may we not learn, Father, from other folks' blunders?"

"Hast thou so learned, daughter?"

"Well, not much," said I. "A little, now and then, maybe."

"I never learned much," saith he, "from the blunders of any man save
Philip de Edyngdon. What I learned from other folks' ev