revealed it to me."

"Are you willing to go dumb before the King?"

"I am willing if God will," said Master Richard.

"Are you willing that the King should be deaf and dumb to your
message?"

"If God will," said Master Richard again.

"What is that which you bear on your breast?"

"It is the five wounds, my father."

"Tell me of your life. Are you yet in the way of perfection?"

Then the two solitaries talked together a long while; I could not
understand all that Master Richard told to me; and I think there was
much that he did not tell me, but it was of matters that I am scarce
worthy to name, of open visions and desolations, and the darkness of the
fourth Word of our Saviour on the rood; and again of scents and sounds
and melodies such as those of which Master Rolle has written; and above
all of charity and its degrees, for without charity all the rest is
counted as dung.

_Avemaria_ rang at sunset, but they did not hear it, and at the end the
holy man within crept nearer and raised himself.

"I must see your face, brother," he said. "It may be then that I shall