stant abetted a
delusion that he who stood knocking outside was Christ Himself with the
signs of His Passion: unclothed was the man she saw, bloodstained, both
head and hands. Then she noted fair hair, and had to believe that this
haggard man was one with the brave-faced boy of earliest summer. He clung
to the ledge for support; so spent was he that a word was hard to
compass.

'For the love of God,' he said, 'you who are watchers to-night pray for a
human soul in sore need.'

She would vouch for that; she would summon one with authority to vouch
for more.

When she carried word within: ''Tis the same,' said one, 'who twice has
left fish at the gate, who slept once at the feet of St. Margaret.'

To the wicket went the head monitress, and, moved to compassion by the
sight of his great distress, she gave him good assurance that not the
five watchers only, but one and all, should watch and pray for him that
night, and she asked his name for the ordering of prayer.

'Not mine!' he said. 'I ask your prayers for another whose need is mine.
Pray for her by the name Diadyomene.'

He unfastened the cross from his neck and gave it.

'This is a pledge,' he said, 'I would lay out of my weak keeping for St.
Mary, St. Margaret, and St. Faith to hold for me, lest to-night I should
desire I had it, to be rid of it finally according to promise.'

He had not made himself intelligible; clearer utterance was beyond him.

'No matter!' he said. 'Take it--keep it--till I come again.'

He knotted the empty string again to his neck, and, commended to God,
went his way.

Now when these two, little later, asked of each other, 'What was the
strange name he gave?' neither could remember it. But they said 'God
knows,' and prayed for that nameless soul.

Somehow Christian got down the cliffs to the shore, as somehow he had
come all the way. Little wonder head and hands showed bloody: every
member was bruised and torn, for he had stumbled and gone headlong a
score of times in his desperate speed over craggy tracks, where daylight
goings needed to be wary. Scarcely could hoofed creatures have come
whole-foot, and he, though of hardy unshod practice, brought from that
way not an inch sound under tread. An uncertain moon had favoured him at
worst passes, else had he fallen to certain destruction.

He stood at the sea's edge and paused to get breath and courage. To his
shame, he was deficient in fortitude: the salt of the wet shingle bit hi