coverings, but would lie down
for a short time on one of the benches of the Church, resting his head
on the book which he had used for praying or reading."

The Prioress chanced to have read this passage aloud, in the Refectory,
two days before.

As she stood in the dawn light, overcome with sleep, yet unwilling to
leave her vigil at the shrine, she remembered the example of this
greatly revered Bishop of Worcester, "a man of great piety and dovelike
simplicity, one beloved of God, and of the people whom he ruled in all
things," dead just over a hundred years, yet ever living in the memory
of all.

So, remembering his example, the Prioress went to her table, and
shutting the clasps of her treasured Gregorian Sacramentary, placed it
on the floor before the shrine of the Virgin.

Then, flinging her cloak upon the ground, and a silk covering over the
book, she sank down, stretched her weary limbs upon the cloak and laid
her head on the Sacramentary, trusting that some of the many sacred
prayers therein contained would pass into her mind while she slept.

Yet still her spirit cried: "A sign, a sign! However slight, however
small; a sign mine own heart can understand."

Whether she slept a few moments only or an hour, she could not tell.
Yet she felt strangely rested, when she was awakened by the sound of a
most heavenly song outpoured. It flooded her cell with liquid trills,
as of little silver bells.

The Prioress opened her eyes, without stirring.

Sunlight streamed in through the open window; and lo, upon the marble
hand of the Madonna, that very hand which, in the vision, had taken
hers and placed it within Hugh's, stood Mary Antony's robin, that gay
little Knight of the Bloody Vest, pouring forth so wonderful a song of
praise, and love, and fulness of joy, that it seemed as if his little
ruffling throat must burst with the rush of joyous melody.

The robin sang. Our Lady smiled. The Babe on her knees looked merry.

The Prioress lay watching, not daring to move; her head resting on the
Sacramentary.

Then into her mind there came the suggestion of a test--a sign.

"If he fly around the chamber," she whispered, "my place is here. But
if he fly straight out into the open, then doth our blessed Lady bid me
also to arise and go."

And, scarce had she so thought, when, with a last triumphant trill of
joy, straight from our Lady's hand, like an arrow from the bow, the
robin shot through the open casement