might be drawn to Thee, and carried them across the world from the
outmost East to the outmost West? Surely, Lord God! Thou hast written
my name in Thy Book of Life, and hast set for me a happy place in the
heavens. Surely, all I have and am I have given Thee; and all that a
worm of the earth may do have I done! If in anything I have failed,
show me, Lord, I beseech Thee, wherein I have come short. If any man
there be more worthy in Thine eyes, let me, too, set eyes upon him,
that I may learn of him how I may the better please Thee. Teach me,
Lord, that which I know not, for Thou alone knowest and art wise!"

As Basil was praying thus in the hour before dawn, once more the Angel,
clothed in silver and blue-green, as though it had been a semblance of
the starry night, came to him, and said: "Give me thy hand;" and Basil
touched the hand celestial, and the Angel drew him from his pillar, and
placed him on the ground, and said: "This is that land of the west in
which thou art to learn what is for thy good. Take for staff this
piece of tree, and follow this road till thou reachest the third
milestone; and there, in the early light, thou shalt meet him who can
instruct thee. For a sign, thou shalt know the man by the little maid
of seven years who helpeth him to drive the geese. But the man, though
young, may teach one who is older than he, and he is one who is greatly
pleasing in God's eyes."

The clear light was glittering on the dewy grass and the wet bushes
when Basil reached the third milestone. He heard the distant sound as
of a shepherd piping, and he saw that the road in front of him was
crowded for near upon a quarter of a mile with a great gathering of
geese--fully two thousand they numbered--feeding in the grass and
rushes, and cackling, and hustling each other aside, and clacking their
big orange-coloured bills, as they waddled slowly onward towards the
city.

Among them walked a nut-brown little maiden of seven, clad in a green
woollen tunic, with bright flaxen hair and innocent blue eyes, and bare
brown legs, and feet shod in shoes of hide. In her hand she carried a
long hazel wand, with which she kept in rule the large grey and white
geese.

As the flock came up to the Hermit, she gazed at him with her sweet
wondering eyes, for never had she seen so strange and awful a man as
this, with his sheepskin dress and iron chain and crown of thorns, and
skin burnt black, and bleached hair and dark brows