was far gone in rage and out of hand. The Bishop took his
offended ears to bed, and left him to sit alone by the dying fire, with
bitterness for company.

Came into the courtyard at midnight the Christmas singers from the town;
the blacksmith rolling a great bass, the crockery-seller who sang
falsetto, and a fool of the village who had slept overnight in a manger
on the holy eve a year before and had brought from it, not wit, but a
voice from Heaven. A miracle of miracles.

The men-at-arms in the courtyard stood back to give them space. They
sang with eyes upturned, with full-throated vigour, albeit a bit
warily, with an anxious glance now and then toward those windows beyond
which the young lord sulked by the fire.

"The Light of Light Divine,
True Brightness undefiled.
He bears for us the shame of sin,
A holy, spotless Child."

They sang to the frosty air.

When neither money nor burning fagot was flung from the window they
watched, they took their departure, relieved if unrewarded.

In former years the lady of the Castle had thrown them alms. But times
had changed. Now the gentle lady was gone, and the _seigneur_ sulked in
the hall.

With the dawn Charles the Fair took himself to bed. And to him,
pattering barefoot along stone floors, came Clotilde, the child of his
disappointment.

"Are you asleep?"

One arm under his head, he looked at her without answer.

"It is the anniversary of the birth of our Lord," she ventured. "Today
He is born. I thought--" She put out a small, very cold hand. But he
turned his head away.

"Back to your bed," he said shortly. "Where is your nurse, to permit
this?"

The child's face fell. Something she had expected, some miracle,
perhaps, a softening of the lord her father, so that she might ask of
him a Christmas boon.

The Bishop had said that Christmas miracles were often wrought, and she
herself knew that this was true. Had not the Fool secured his voice, so
that he who had been but lightly held became the village troubadour, and
slept warm and full at night?

She had gone to the Bishop with this the night before.

"If I should lie in a manger all night," she said, standing with her
feet well apart and looking up at him, "would I become a boy?"

The Bishop tugged at his beard. "A boy, little maid! Would you give up
your blue eyes and your soft skin to be a roystering lad?"

"My father wishes for a son," she had replied and the cloud that was
ov