ong, and of her land, for that she is a
Widow Lady without help. Lord, you who have all the world at your
mercy and do your commandment in all things, grant me betimes to hear
tidings of my brother and he be on live, for sore need have we of him.
And so lend force to the knight and power against all our enemies, that
for your love and for pity is fain to succour and aid my mother that is
sore discounselled. Lord, well might it beseem you to remember of your
pity and the sweetness that is in you, and of compassion that she hath
been unrighteously disherited, and that no succour nor aid nor counsel
hath she, save of you alone. You are her affiance and her succour, and
therefore ought you to remember that the good knight Joseph of
Abarimacie, that took down your Body when it hung upon the rood, was
her own uncle. Better loved he to take down your Body than all the
gold and all the fee that Pilate might give him. Lord, good right of
very truth had he so to do, for he took you in his arms beside the
rood, and laid your Body in the holy sepulchre, wherein were you
covered of the sovran cloth for the which have I come in hither. Lord,
grant it be your pleasure that I may have it, for love of the knight by
whom it was set in this chapel; sith that I am of his lineage it ought
well to manifest itself in this sore need, so it come according to your
pleasure."

Forthwith the cloth came down above the altar, and she straightway
found taken away therefrom as much as it pleased Our Lord she should
have. Josephus telleth us of a truth, that never did none enter into
the chapel that might touch the cloth save only this one damsel. She
set her face to it and her mouth or ever the cloth removed.

XIX.

Thereafter, she took the piece that God would and set it near herself
full worshipfully, but still the stout went on of the evil spirits
round about the church-yard, and they dealt one another blows so sore
that all the forest resounded thereof, and it seemed that it was all
set on fire of the flame that issued from them. Great fear would the
damsel have had of them, had she not comforted herself in God and in
His dear, sweet Mother, and the most holy cloth that was within there.
A Voice appeared upon the stroke of midnight from above the chapel, and
speaketh to the souls whereof the bodies lie within the grave-yard:
"How sore loss hath befallen you of late, and all other whose bodies
lie in other hallowed church-yards by the