this young hermit came? And to-day it will not bleed, you say?"

He flashed me a last keen glance of his eyes, which had grown narrow and
seemed laden with mockery. The little lady whispered something to him,
in answer to which he laughed contemptuously.

"Fool's mummery," he snapped, and drew her on, she going, it seemed to
me, reluctantly.

But the crowd had heard him and the insult offered to the shrine. A
deep-throated bay rose up in menace, and some leapt to their feet as if
they would attack him.

He checked, and wheeled at the sound. "How now?" he cried, his voice a
trumpet-call, his eyes flashing terribly upon them; and as dogs crouch
to heel at the angry bidding of their master, the multitude grew silent
and afraid under the eyes of that single steel-clad man.

He laughed a deep-throated laugh, and strode down the hill with his
little lady on his arm.

But when he had mounted and was riding off, the crowd, recovering
courage from his remoteness, hurled its curses after him and shrilly
branded him, "Derider!" and "Blasphemer!"

He rode contemptuously amain, however, looking back but once, and then
to laugh at them.

Soon he had dipped out of sight, and of his company nothing was visible
but the fluttering red pennons with the device of the white horse-head.
Gradually these also sank and vanished, and once more I was alone with
the crowd of pilgrims.

Enjoining prayer upon them again, I turned and re-entered the hut.

CHAPTER VIII. THE VISION

Pray as we might, night came and still the image gave no sign. The crowd
melted away, with promises to return at dawn--promises that sounded
almost like a menace in my ears.

I was alone once more, alone with my thoughts and these made sport of
me. It was not only upon the unresponsiveness of St. Sebastian that my
mind now dwelt, nor yet upon the horrid dread that this unresponsiveness
might be a sign of Heaven's displeasure, an indication that as a
custodian of that shrine I was unacceptable through the mire of sin
that still clung to me. Rather, my thoughts went straying down the
mountain-side in the wake of that gallant company, that stern-faced man
and that gentle-eyed little lady who had hung upon his arm. Before the
eyes of my mind there flashed again the brilliance of their arms, in my
ears rang the thunder of their chargers' hooves, whilst the image of the
girl in her shimmering, bronze-hued robe remained insistently.

Theirs the life that sh