lord and I, came down from the
desolate stony heaths, and went hand and hand across the plain, where
men and women of that folk were feasting round about the simple roofs
and woodland halls which they had raised there. Then they left their
games and sports and ran to us, and we walked on quietly, though we
knew not whether the meeting was to be for death or life. But that
kind folk gathered round us, and asked us no story till they had fed
us, and bathed us, and clad us after their fashion. And then, despite
the nakedness and poverty wherein they had first seen us, they would
have it that we were gods sent down to them from the world beyond the
mountains by their fathers of old time; for of Holy Church, and the
Blessed Trinity, and the Mother of God they knew no more than did I at
that time, but were heathen, as the Gentiles of yore agone. And even
when we put all that Godhood from us, and told them as we might and
could what we were (for we had no heart to lie to such simple folk),
their kindness abated nothing, and they bade us abide there, and were
our loving friends and brethren.

"There in sooth had I been content to abide till eld came upon me, but
my lord would not have it so, but longed for greater things for me.
Though in sooth to me it seemed as if his promise of worship of me by
the folk had been already fulfilled; for when we had abided there some
while, and our beauty, which had been marred by the travail of our
way-faring, had come back to us in full, or it maybe increased
somewhat, they did indeed deal with us with more love than would most
men with the saints, were they to come back on the earth again; and
their children would gather round about me and make me a partaker of
their sports, and be loth to leave me; and the faces of their old folk
would quicken and gladden when I drew nigh: and as for their young men,
it seemed of them that they loved the very ground that my feet trod on,
though it grieved me that I could not pleasure some of them in such
wise as they desired. And all this was soft and full of delight for my
soul: and I, whose body a little while ago had been driven to daily
toil with evil words and stripes, and who had known not what words of
thanks and praise might mean!

"But so it must be that we should depart, and the kind folk showed us
how sore their hearts were of our departure, but they gainsaid us in
nowise, but rather furthered us all they might, and we went our ways
from