Clement chanted a child's story in a sort of recitative. The boy
listened with rapture, and presently succumbed to sleep.

Clement began to rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over
him a little lullaby well known in Tergon, with which his own mother had
often set him off.

He sighed deeply, and could not help thinking what might have been but
for a piece of paper with a lie in it.

The next moment the moonlight burst into his cell, and with it, and in
it, Margaret Brandt was down at his knee with a timorous hand upon his
shoulder.

"Gerald, you do not reject us. You cannot."

The hermit stared from the child to her in throbbing amazement.

"Us?" he gasped at last.

Margaret was surprised in her turn.

"What!" she cried. "Doth not a father know his own child? Fie, Gerard,
to pretend! 'Tis thine own flesh and blood thou holdest to thine heart."

Long they sat and talked that night, and the end of it was Clement
promised to leave his cave for the manse at Gouda. But once the new
vicar was installed Margaret kept away from the parsonage. She left
little Gerard there to complete the conquest her maternal heart ascribed
to him, and contented herself with stolen meetings with her child.

Then the new vicar of Gouda, his beard close shaved, and in a grey frock
and large felt hat, came to bring her to the vicarage.

"My sweet Margaret!" he cried. "Why is this? Why hold you aloof from
your own good deed? We have been waiting and waiting for you every day,
and no Margaret."

And Margaret went to the manse, and found Catherine, Clement's mother,
there; and next day being Sunday the two women heard the Vicar of Gouda
preach in his own church. It was crammed with persons, who came curious,
but remained. Never was Clement's gift as a preacher displayed more
powerfully. In a single sermon, which lasted two hours, and seemed to
last but twenty minutes, he declared the whole scripture.

The two women in a corner sat entranced, with streaming eyes.

As soon as they were by themselves, Margaret threw her arms round
Catherine's neck and kissed her.

"Mother, mother, I am not quite a happy woman, but oh! I am a proud
one."

And she vowed on her knees never by word or deed to let her love come
between this young saint and heaven.

The child, who lived to become the great Erasmus, was already winning a
famous name at school, when Margaret was stricken with the plague and
died. A fortnight later and Clement