vable that the Prior himself spent a good deal of time in the
patient's room, and showed unusual interest in his progress towards
recovery. The Prior understood English; but if he had hoped to gather
any information concerning Brian's history from the ravings of his
delirium he was mistaken. Brian's mind ran upon the incidents of his
childhood, upon the tour that he had made with his father when he was a
boy, upon his school-days; not upon the sad and tragic events with which
he had been connected. He scarcely ever mentioned the names of his
mother or brother. Like Falstaff, when he lay a-dying, be "babbled of
green fields," and nothing more.

At one time he grew better: then he had a relapse, and was very near
death indeed; but at last the power of youth re-asserted itself, and he
came slowly back to life once more. But it was as a man who had been in
another world; who had faced the bitterness of death and the darkness of
the grave.

He was as much startled when he looked at himself for the first time in
a looking-glass as a girl who has lost her beauty after a virulent
attack of small-pox. Not that he had ever had much beauty to boast of;
but the look of youth and hope which had once brightened his eyes was
gone; his cheeks were sunken, his temples hollow, his features drawn and
pinched with bodily pain and weakness. And--greatest change perhaps of
all--his hair had turned from brown to grey; an alteration so striking
and visible that, as he put down the little mirror which had been
brought to him, he murmured to himself, with a bitter smile--"My own
mother would not know me now." And then he turned his face away from the
light, and lay silent and motionless for so long a space of time that
the lay-brother who waited on him thought that he was sleeping.

When he rose from his bed and was able to sit in the sunny garden or the
cloisters, spring had come in all its tender glow of beauty, and sent a
thrill of fresh life through the sick man's veins.

Nature had always been dear to Brian. He loved the sights and sounds of
country life. The hills, the waving trees, tranquil skies and running
water calmed and refreshed his jaded brain and harrassed nerves. The
broad fields, crimsoning with anemones, purpling with hyacinth and
auricula; the fresh green of the fig trees, the lovely tendrils of the
newly shooting vines even the sight of the oxen with their patient eyes,
and the homely, feathered creatures of the farmyard,