d helped to build the house, should still
find a place of service and honour in the house; and they remembered
that the Master of the house had once been a Babe warmed in a manger by
the breath of kine. And at the thought of this men grew more pitiful
to their cattle, and to the beasts in servitude, and to all dumb
animals. And that was one good fruit which sprang from the Prince
Bishop's repentance.

Now over the colossal stone oxen hung the bells of the Cathedral. On
Christmas Eve the ringers, according to the old custom, ascended to
their gallery to ring in the birth of the Babe Divine. At the moment
of midnight the master ringer gave the word, and the great bells began
to swing in joyful sequence. Down below in the crowded church lay the
image of the new-born Child on the cold straw, and at His haloed head
stood the images of the ox and the ass. Far out across the snow-roofed
city, far away over the white glistening country rang the glad music of
the tower. People who went to their doors to listen cried in
astonishment: "Hark! what strange music is that? It sounds as if the
lowing of cattle were mingled with the chimes of the bells." In truth
it was so. And in every byre the oxen and the kine answered the
strange sweet cadences with their lowing, and the great stone oxen
lowed back to their kin of the meadow through the deep notes of the
joy-peal.

In the fulness of time the Prince Bishop Evrard died and was buried as
he had willed, with his face humbly turned to the earth; and to this
day the weather-wasted figure of the little girl looks down on him from
her niche, and the slab over his grave serves as a stepping-stone to
pious feet.

The Little Bedesman of Christ

This is the legend of Francis, the Little Bedesman of Christ. Seven
hundred years ago was he born in Assisi, the quaint Umbrian town among
the rocks; and for twenty years and more he cherished but one thought,
and one desire, and one hope; and these were that he might lead the
beautiful and holy and sorrowful life which our Lord lived on the
earth, and that in every way he might resemble our Lord in the purity
and loveliness of His humanity.

Home and wealth and honour he surrendered, and the love of a wife and
of little prattlers on his knees; for none of these things were the
portion of Christ.

No care he took as to how he should be sheltered by night or wherewith
he should be clothed by day; and for meat and drink he looked