ed my own
handiwork. Yet there struck me as being something so utterly doleful
in the man's white face, and the blood running all about him, and
washing off the stains of paint from his face and hands, and splashed
clothes, that my heart mis- gave me, and I hoped that he was not dead;
I took some water from a vessel he had been using for his painting,
and, kneeling, washed his face.

Was it some resemblance to my father's dead face, which I had seen
when I was young, that made me pity him? I laid my hand upon his
heart, and felt it beating feebly; so I lifted him up gently, and
carried him towards a heap of straw that he seemed used to lie upon;
there I stripped him and looked to his wounds, and used leech-craft,
the memory of which God gave me for this purpose, I suppose, and
within seven days I found that he would not die.

Afterwards, as I wandered about the castle, I came to a room in one of
the upper storeys, that had still the roof on, and windows in it with
painted glass, and there I found green raiment and swords and armour,
and I clothed myself.

So when he got well I asked him what his name was, and he me, and we
both of us said, "Truly I know not." Then said I, "but we must call
each other some name, even as men call days."

"Call me Swerker," he said, "some priest I knew once had that name."

"And me Wulf," said I, "though wherefore I know not."

Then I tried to learn painting till I thought I should die, but at
last learned it through very much pain and grief.

And, as the years went on and we grew old and grey, we painted purple
pictures and green ones instead of the scarlet and yellow, so that the
walls looked altered, and always we painted God's judgments.

And we would sit in the sunset and watch them with the golden light
changing them, as we yet hoped God would change both us and our works.
Often too we would sit outside the walls and look at the trees and
sky, and the ways of the few men and women we saw; therefrom sometimes
befell adventures.

Once there went past a great funeral of some king going to his own
country, not as he had hoped to go, but stiff and colourless, spices
filling up the place of his heart.

And first went by very many knights, with long bright hauberks on,
that fell down before their knees as they rode, and they all had
tilting-helms on with the same crest, so that their faces were quite
hidden: and this crest was two hands clasped together tightly as
though they w