y was taking place. There were six girls dressed in white, who took
from the altar some yellow object--I thought it was gold, for though, like
my acquaintance, I was told not to see, I could not help seeing. Somebody
else thought that it was yellow flowers, and I think the girls, though I
cannot remember clearly, laid it between the man's hands. He went out
after a time, and as he passed through the great hall one of us, I forget
whom, noticed that he passed over two gravestones. Then the vision became
broken, but presently he stood in a monk's habit among men-at-arms in the
middle of a village reading from a parchment. He was calling villagers
about him, and presently he and they and the men-at-arms took ship for
some long voyage. The vision became broken again, and when we could see
clearly they had come to what seemed the Holy Land. They had begun some
kind of sacred labour among palm-trees. The common men among them stood
idle, but the gentlemen carried large stones, bringing them from certain
directions, from the cardinal points I think, with a ceremonious
formality. The evoker of spirits said they must be making some kind of
masonic house. His mind, like the minds of so many students of these
hidden things, was always running on masonry and discovering it in strange
places.

We broke the vision that we might have supper, breaking it with some form
of words which I forget. When supper had ended the seeress cried out that
while we had been eating they had been building, and they had built not a
masonic house but a great stone cross. And now they had all gone away but
the man who had been in chain armour and two monks we had not noticed
before. He was standing against the cross, his feet upon two stone rests
a little above the ground, and his arms spread out. He seemed to stand
there all day, but when night came he went to a little cell, that was
beside two other cells. I think they were like the cells I have seen in
the Aran Islands, but I cannot be certain. Many days seemed to pass, and
all day every day he stood upon the cross, and we never saw anybody there
but him and the two monks. Many years seemed to pass, making the vision
flutter like a drift of leaves before our eyes, and he grew old and
white-haired, and we saw the two monks, old and white-haired, holding him
upon the cross. I asked the evoker of spirits why the man stood there, and
before he had time to answer I saw two people, a man and a woman, rising
l