then bow their heads at the Elevation.]

He knelt down against the wall behind the high altar, and began to
address himself to devotion, but he was distracted at first by the
splendour of the tomb, the porphyry and the glass-work below, that
Master Peter the Roman had made, and the precious shrine of gold above
where the body lay, and the golden statues of the saints on either side.
All about him, too, were such marvels that there is little wonder that
he could not pray well for thinking on them--the kings that lay here and
there and their effigies, and the paved steps on this side and that, and
the fair painted glass and the high dark roof. Near where he knelt, too,
he could see the great relic-chest, and knew what lay therein--the
girdle of our Blessed Lady herself, mirror of chastity; the piece of
stone marked by Christ's foot as He went up to heaven; a piece of the
Very Rood on which He hanged; the precious blood that He shed there, in
a crystal vase; the head of saint Benet, father of monks. [Surely not!]
All these things have I seen, too, myself, so I know that they are truly
there.

Behind him, as he kneeled on the stones, sounded the singing of the
monks, and the noise of so much praise delighted him, but they ended
soon, and at _Sanctus_ his spirit began to be rapt into silence, and the
holy things to make heaven about him.

He told me that he did not know what befell him until it came to the
elevation of the sacring: only he knew that his soul was filled with
lightness and joyousness, as when he had walked in the wood at dawn
three days before.

But as he lifted up his hands to see his God and to beat upon his