Gouda. And Gerard, who had been
praying for resignation all this time, received her with peculiar
tenderness as a treasure he was to lose; but she was agitated and eager
to let him see without words that she would never marry, and she fawned
on him like a little dog to be forgiven. And as she was going away she
murmured, "Forgive! and forget! I am but a woman."

He misunderstood her, and said, "All I bargain for is, let me see thee
content; for pity's sake, let me not see thee unhappy as I have this
while."

"My darling, you never shall again," said Margaret, with streaming eyes,
and kissed his hand.

He misunderstood this too at first; but when month after month
passed, and he heard no more of her marriage, and she came to Gouda
comparatively cheerful, and was even civil to Father Ambrose, a mild
benevolent monk from the Dominican convent hard by--then he understood
her; and one day he invited her to walk alone with him in the sacred
paddock; and before I relate what passed between them, I must give its
history.

When Gerard had been four or five days at the manse, looking out of
window he uttered an exclamation of joy. "Mother, Margaret, here is one
of my birds: another, another: four, six, nine. A miracle! a miracle!"

"Why, how can you tell your birds from their fellows?" said Catherine.

"I know every feather in their wings. And see; there is the little
darling whose claw I gilt, bless it!"

And presently his rapture took a serious turn, and he saw Heaven's
approbation in this conduct of the birds as he did in the fall of the
cave. This wonderfully kept alive his friendship for animals; and he
enclosed a paddock, and drove all the sons of Cain from it with threats
of excommunication, "On this little spot of earth we'll have no murder,"
said he. He tamed leverets and partridges, and little birds, and hares,
and roe-deer. He found a squirrel with a broken leg; he set it with
infinite difficulty and patience; and during the cure showed it
repositories of acorns, nuts, chestnuts, etc. And this squirrel got well
and went off, but visited him in hard weather, and brought a mate, and
next year little squirrels were found to have imbibed their parents'
sentiments, and of all these animals each generation was tamer than the
last. This set the good parson thinking, and gave him the true clue to
the great successes of mediaeval hermits in taming wild animals.

He kept the key of this paddock, and never let any man b