ut seeing the little children
thus gazing out, and knowing that all who would enter into heaven must
become as they are, I thought it must needs be in this manner that
people change and pass away to God when the ending of life is come."

On this isle the Sea-farers kept a Christmas, and they made such cheer
as they might at that blessed time, speaking of the stony fields
wherein the Shepherds lay about their flocks, but no fields were ever
so stony as these which were littered with stones fathom-deep, with
never a grain of earth or blade of grass between. And in this isle it
was that Brother Benedict died, very peaceful, and without pain at the
close. On the feast of the Three Kings that poor monk was privileged
even more than those Kings had been, for not only was the Babe of
Heaven made manifest to him, but his soul, a little child, went forth
from him to be with that benign Babe for evermore. Under the dead tree
the Sea-farers buried him, and on the trunk of the tree they fastened a
crucifix on the side on which he reposed.

The bones, too, of the dead men they gathered together and covered with
stones in a hollow which they made.

So they left the island, marvelling whence all those stones had come,
and how they had been rained many and deep on that one place. Said
one, "It may be that these are the stones wherewith our Lord and the
prophets and the blessed martyrs were stoned, laid up as in a treasury
to bear witness on the day of doom." "It may be," said another, "that
these are the stones which Satan, tempting the Lord, bade Him turn into
bread, and therefore are they kept for an evidence against the
tempter." "Peradventure these be the stony places," said another,
"whereon the good seed fell and perished in its first upspringing, and
so they be kept for the admonishment of rash Sea-farers and such as
have no long-continuance in well-doing." But no man among them was
satisfied as to the mystery of that strange isle.

On many other shores they set foot. Most were fruitful and friendly;
and they rested from their seeking, and repaired the ship, and took in
such stores as they might gather during their sojourn. Though often it
befell that while they were still afar the wind wafted them the
fragrance of rare spices so that their eyes brightened and their faces
reddened with joyful anticipation, yet ever when they landed they found
that not yet, not yet had they reached the island garden of their
quest.