s reiterated entreaties,--set forth to bear
the little child across the wind-swept ford. How he staggered in
midstream, amazed and terrified under the awful weight of that,
apparently so light, burden; to learn, on struggling ashore at last,
that he had borne upon his shoulder no mortal infant, but the whole
world and the eternal maker of it, Christ Himself.

These and many another wonder tale of Christian miracle did she tell to
Dickie--he squatting on a rug beside her, resting his curly head
against her knees, while the pink-footed pigeons hurried hither and
thither, picking up the handfuls of barley he scattered on the flags,
and the peacocks sunned themselves with a certain worldly and
disdainful grace on the hand-rails of the gray balustrades, and young
Camp, after some wild skirmish in search of sport, flung himself down
panting, his tongue lolling out of his grinning jaws, by the boy's
side.

And Katherine, putting aside her cares as regent of Dickie's kingdom
and the sorrow that lay so chill against her heart, would tell him
stories too, but of a different order of sentiment and of thought. For
Katherine was young yet, and her stories were gallant--since her own
spirit was very brave--or merry, because it delighted her to hear the
boy laugh. And often, as he grew a little older, she would sit with her
arm round him, in the keen, winter twilights before the lamps were lit,
on the broad cushioned bench of the oriel window in the Chapel-Room.
Outside, the stars grew in number and brightness as the dusk deepened.
Within, the firelight played over the white-paneled walls, revealing
fitfully the handsome faces of former Calmadys--short-lived, passing
hence all unsated with the desperate joys of living--painted by Vandyke
and Sir Peter Lely, or by Romney and Sir Joshua. Then she would tell
him not only of Aladdin, of Cinderella, and time-honoured
Puss-in-Boots, but of Merlin the great enchanter, and of King Arthur
and his company of noble knights. And of the loves of Sigurd the
Niblung and Brunhilda the wise and terrible queen, and of their
lifelong sorrow, and of the fateful treasure of fairy gold which lies
buried beneath the rushing waters of the Rhine. Or she would tell him
of those cold, clear, far-off times in the northern sojourning places
of our race--tell him of the cow Audhumla, alone in the vast plain at
the very beginning of things, licking the stones crusted over with hoar
frost and salt, till, on the th