igh all day long. Are you certain sure you've
never been a monk?"

"Very certain, friend," said Gerhardt, smiling. "Is not the existence
of Agnes answer enough to that?"

"Oh, but you might have run away," said Isel, whose convictions on most
subjects were of rather a hazy order. "There are monks that do, and
priests too: or if they don't forsake their Order, they don't behave
like it. Why, just look at Reinbald the Chaplain--who'd ever take him
for a priest, with his long curls and his silken robes, and ruffling up
his hair to hide the tonsure?"

"Ay, there are men who are ashamed of nothing so much as of the cross
which their Master bore for them," admitted Gerhardt sorrowfully. "And
at times it looks as if the lighter the cross be, the less ready they
are to carry it. There be who would face a drawn sword more willingly
than a scornful laugh."

"Well, we none of us like to be laughed at."

"True. But he who denies his faith through the mockery of Herod's
soldiers, how shall he bear the scourging in Pilate's hall?"

"Well, I'm none so fond of neither of 'em," said Isel, taking down a
ham.

"It is only women who can't stand being touched," commented Haimet
rather disdainfully. "But you are out there, Gerard: it is a disgrace
to be laughed at, and disgrace is ever worse to a true man than pain."

"Why should it be disgrace, if I am in the right?" answered Gerhardt.
"If I do evil, and refuse to own it, that is disgrace, if you will; but
if I do well, or speak truth, and stand by it, what cause have I to be
ashamed?"

"But if men believe that you have done ill, is that no disgrace?"

"If they believe it on false witness, the disgrace is equally false.
`Blessed are ye, when men shall persecute you, and shall say all evil
against you, lying, for My sake.' Those are His words who bore all
shame for us."

"They sha'n't say it of me, unless they smart for it!" cried Haimet
hotly.

"Then wilt thou not be a true follower of the Lamb of God, who, when He
was reviled, reviled not again, but committed Himself unto Him that
judgeth righteously."

"Saints be with you!" said Anania, lifting the latch, and intercepting a
response from Haimet which might have been somewhat incisive. "I
declare, I'm just killed with the heat!"

"I should have guessed you were alive, from the look of you," returned
Derette calmly.

"So you're going into the anchorhold, I hear?" said Anania, fanning
herself with her handkerch