wards?"

Another smile.

"No, my son, all these things go by habit."

"Shall I begin to leave off my shoes?"

"Not yet, your vocation is not settled. You may yet choose the
world."

"I never shall."

"Poor boy, you are young and cannot tell. Perhaps before nightfall
a different light may be thrown upon your good resolutions."

A pause ensued. At length Martin went on, "At least you have books.
I love books."

"At first we had not even them, but later on the Holy Father
thought that those who contend with the unbelieving learned should
be learned themselves. They who pour forth must suck in."

"When did the Order come to Oxford?"

"Thirty years agone. When we first landed at Dover we made our way
to London, the home of commerce, and Oxford, the home of learning.
The two first gray brethren lost their way in the woods of Nuneham,
on their road to the city, and afraid of the floods, which were
out, and of the dark night, which made it difficult to avoid the
water, took refuge in a grange, which belonged to the Abbey of
Abingdon, where dwelt a small branch of the great Benedictine
Brotherhood. Their clothes were ragged and torn with thorns, and
they only spoke broken English, so the monks took them for the
travelling jugglers of the day, and welcomed them with great
hospitality. But after supper they all assembled in the common
room, and bade the supposed jugglers show their craft.

"'We be not jugglers, we be poor brethren of our Lord and Saint
Francis.'

"Now the monks were very jealous of the new Order, so unlike
themselves, in its renunciation of ease and luxury, and in very
spite they called them knaves and impostors, and kicked them out of
doors."

"What did they do?"

"They slept under a tree, and the angels comforted them. The next
day they got to Oxford and began their work. The plague had been
raging in the poorer quarters of the city, and they brought the joy
of the Gospel to those miserable people. At length their numbers
increased, and they built this house wherein we dwell."

In such conversation as this Martin passed a happy hour, then went
to the first lecture he attended, in the schools attached to the
friary, where the great works of Augustine and Aquinas formed the
text books; no Creek as yet. He passed from Latin to Logic, as the
handmaid of theology. The great thinker Aristotle supplied the
method, not the language or matter, and became the ally of
Christianity, under the renderin