he blessed hair--"now, my Magot, thou wilt get well
again. Thou must!"

Margaret looked up into the loving face above her, and a faint, sad
smile flitted across her lips.

"Think so, dear Lady, if it comfort thee," she said. "It will not be
for long!"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note 1. A garment which was supposed to draw the blood downwards from
the brain.

Note 2. "Hairs of a saint's beard, dipped in holy water, and taken
inwardly," are given by Fosbroke (Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, page
479) in his list of medieval remedies.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

FATHER BRUNO'S SERMON.

"And speak'st thou thus,
Despairing of the sun that sets to thee,
And of the earthly love that wanes to thee,
And of the Heaven that lieth far from thee?
Peace, peace, fond fool! One draweth near thy door,
Whose footprints leave no print across the snow.
Thy Sun has risen with comfort in His face,
The smile of Heaven to warm thy frozen heart,
And bless with saintly hand. What! is it long
To wait and far to go? Thou shalt not go.
Behold, across the snow to thee He comes,
Thy Heaven descends, and is it long to wait?
Thou shalt not wait. `This night, this night,' He saith,
`I stand at the door and knock.'"

_Jean Ingelow_.

Earl Hubert went very pale when his wife told him of the conversation
which she had had with Margaret. She was his darling, the child of his
old age, and he loved her more dearly than he was himself aware. But
the blessed hair, and the holy water, were swallowed by him in a
figurative sense, with far more implicit faith than they had been,
physically, by Margaret. He was quite easy in his mind after that
event.

The Countess was a little less so. The saintly relic did not weigh
quite so much with her, and the white, still, unchanged face of the girl
weighed more. With the restless anxiety of alarm only half awake, she
tried to bolster up her own hopes by appeals to every other person.

"Father Nicholas, do you think my daughter looks really ill?"

Father Nicholas, lost at the moment in the Aegean Sea, came slowly back
from "the many-twinkling smile of ocean" to the consideration of the
question referred to him.

"My Lady? Ah, yes! The damsel Margaret. To be sure. Well,--looking
ill? I cannot say, Lady, that I have studied the noble damsel's looks.
Perhaps--is she a little paler than she used to be? Ah, my Lady, a