t
after his day in Chartres, he had gone in search of his flocks and
found them missing, but had later discovered them in a field of grain,
from which he was about to drive them angrily, when they fell on their
knees and begged his forgiveness. This, he said, with other signs, had
led him to believe that he was truly God's anointed, even before he had
been visited by Christ.

It may well be asked here how a lad scarcely over twelve years of age
and born of the peasant class, could have suddenly become so
eloquent--so capable of appealing to audiences, and the answer is not
easy to give unless one thoroughly understands the spirit of that age
in which Stephen lived--an age in which there was much high-coloured
and stirring language used by the priests, language which appealed so
strongly to an impressionable lad like Stephen, that he unconsciously
took it for his own and made use of it; being often carried on the tide
of his emotion, far beyond his own understanding of the words and
thoughts he was uttering.

Immediately, he became the Saint of the day, and the martyr's bones
were deserted by those who preferred to listen to the lad's stirring
appeals. It is even reported that he worked miracles to support his own
divine claim, and the enthusiasm to join his army grew daily more
intense. As pilgrims went back to their homes they carried news of
Stephen's Crusade to their children, who, filled with excitement, in
turn passed the news on to their friends. And so the interest spread
like a contagion throughout all parts of France, through Brittany,
where the English ruled, through Normandy, recently added to Philip's
domain, to Aquitaine and Provence, to Toulouse and peaceful Gascony.
Whatever feuds their parents were engaged in, the children did not
care, and were not interested in the wars for power. So while their
elders were prevented from unity of action by the strife and political
divisions of the land, the young were one in feeling and in desire, and
joined gleefully in Stephen's stirring cry:

"Long enough have you knights and warriors, so boastful and so
honoured, been making your fruitless attempts to rescue the tomb of
Christ! God can wait no longer! He is tired of your vain puny efforts.
Stand back and let us, whom you despise, carry out his commission! He
who calls can insure the victory, and we will show you what the
children can do!"

Among the children who listened to Stephen's appeals, the more
enterp