ttle. The young voice rang out clearly, rolling the
sonorous words, without slip or stumbling, to the end of the chapter.

Winfried listened smiling. "That was bravely read, my son," said he, as
the reader paused. "Understandest thou what thou readest?"

"Surely, father," answered the boy; "it was taught me by the masters at
Treves; and we have read this epistle from beginning to end, so that I
almost know it by heart."

Then he began to repeat the passage, turning away from the page as if to
show his skill.

But Winfried stopped him with a friendly lifting of the hand.

"Not so, my son; that was not my meaning. When we pray, we speak to God.
When we read, God speaks to us. I ask whether thou hast heard what He
has said to thee in the common speech. Come, give us again the message
of the warrior and his armour and his battle, in the mother-tongue, so
that all can understand it."

The boy hesitated, blushed, stammered; then he came around to Winfried's
seat, bringing the book. "Take the book, my father," he cried, "and read
it for me. I cannot see the meaning plain, though I love the sound of
the words. Religion I know, and the doctrines of our faith, and the life
of priests and nuns in the cloister, for which my grandmother designs
me, though it likes me little. And fighting I know, and the life of
warriors and heroes, for I have read of it in Virgil and the ancients,
and heard a bit from the soldiers at Treves; and I would fain taste more
of it, for it likes me much. But how the two lives fit together, or what
need there is of armour for a clerk in holy orders, I can never see.
Tell me the meaning, for if there is a man in all the world that knows
it, I am sure it is thou."

So Winfried took the book and closed it, clasping the boy's hand with
his own.

"Let us first dismiss the others to their vespers," said he, "lest they
should be weary."

A sign from the abbess; a chanted benediction; a murmuring of sweet
voices and a soft rustling of many feet over the rushes on the floor;
the gentle tide of noise flowed out through the doors and ebbed away
down the corridors; the three at the head of the table were left alone
in the darkening room.

Then Winfried began to translate the parable of the soldier into the
realities of life.

At every turn he knew how to flash a new light into the picture out
of his own experience. He spoke of the combat with self, and of the
wrestling with dark spirits in solitude. He sp