."

"Tell me that one!" pleaded the hermit.

"Once," said the man, "our band broke into a convent garden and stole
away one of the nuns, to sell as a slave or to keep for a ransom. We
dragged her with us over the rough, long way to our mountain camp, and
set a guard over her for the night. The poor thing prayed to us so
piteously to let her go! And as she begged, she looked from one hard
face to another with trusting, imploring eyes, as if she could not
believe men could be really bad. Father, when her eyes met mine
something pierced my heart! Pity and shame leaped up, for the first
time, within me. But I made my face as hard and cruel as the rest, and
she turned away, hopeless.

"When all was dark and still, I stole like a cat to where she lay
bound. I put my hand on her wrist and whispered, 'Trust me, and I will
take you safely home.' I cut her bonds with my knife, and she looked at
me to show that she trusted. Father, by terrible ways that I knew,
hidden from the others, I took her safe to the convent gate. She
knocked; they opened; and she slipped inside. And, as she left me, she
turned and said, 'God will remember.'

"That was all. I could not go back to the old bad life, and I had
never learned an honest way to earn my bread. So I became a clown, and
must be a clown until I die."

"No! no! my son," cried the hermit, and now his tears were tears of
joy. "God has remembered; your soul is in his sight even as mine, who
have prayed and preached for forty years. Your treasure waits for you
on the heavenly shore just as mine does."

"As YOURS? Father, you mock me!" said the clown.

But when the hermit told him the story of his prayer and the angel's
answer, the poor clown was transfigured with joy, for he knew that his
sins were forgiven. And when the hermit went home to his mountain, the
clown went with him. He, too, became a hermit, and spent his time in
praise and prayer.

Together they lived, and worked, and helped the poor. And when, after
two years, the man who had been a clown died, the hermit felt that he
had lost a brother holier than himself.

For ten years more the hermit lived in his mountain hut, thinking
always of God, fasting and praying, and doing no least thing that was
wrong. Then, one day, the wish once more came, to know how his work
was growing, and once more he prayed that he might see a being--

"Whose soul in the heavenly grace had grown
To the selfsame measure a