nce of Death, a woman called
Simone la Bardine, who was seated on the ground beside her, asked her if
the good Brother was not coming soon.

Guillaumette Dyonis could not see the tailed gown of green and the
horned wimple which Simone la Bardine wore; yet she knew by instinct the
woman was no honest dame. She felt a natural aversion for light women
and the sort the soldiers called their sweethearts or "doxies," but it
had been revealed to her that we should hold such in great pity and
deal compassionately with them. Wherefore she answered Simone la Bardine
gently:

"The good Father will come soon, please God. And we shall have no reason
to regret having waited, for he is eloquent in prayer and his sermons
turn the folk to devotion more even than those of Brother Richard, who
spake in these Cloisters in the springtime. He knows more than any man
living of the times that shall come and shall show us strange portents.
I trow we shall gain great profit of his words."

"God grant it," sighed Simone la Bardine. "But are you not very sorry to
be blind?"

"No. I wait to see God."

Simone la Bardine made her mantle into a cushion, and said:

"Life is all ups and downs. I live at the top of the Rue Saint-Antoine.
'T is the finest part of the city and the merriest, for the best
hostelries are in the Place Baudet and thereabout. Before the Wars there
was aye abundance there of hot cakes and fresh herrings and Auxerre
wine by the tun. With the English famine entered the town. Now is there
neither bread in the bin nor firewood on the hearth. One after other the
Armagnacs and the Burgundians have drunk up all the wine, and there is
naught left in the cellar but a little thin, sour cider and sloe-juice.
Knights armed for the tourney, pilgrims with their cockleshells
and staves, traders with their chests full of knives and little
service-books, where are they gone? They never come now to seek a
lodging and good living in the Rue Saint-Antoine. But the wolves quit
covert in the forests and prowl of nights in the faubourgs and devour
little children."

"Put your trust in God," Guillaumette Dyonis answered her.

"Amen!" returned Simone la Bardine. "But I have not told you the worst.
On the Thursday before St, John's day, at three after midnight, two
Englishmen came knocking at my door. Not knowing but they had come to
rob me or break up my chests and coffers out of mischief, or do some
other devilment, I shouted to them from my w