could not express--he wept for joy, or trembled with emotion like
Saint Augustine of old {8}.

Then again, Sunday by Sunday, the chaplain was like a living oracle
to him, as to many others. The ascetic face became beautiful with a
beauty not of this earth--"his pallor," said they, "became of a
fair shining red" when he spoke of Christ or holy things, while
anon his thunder tones awoke an echo in the heart of many as he
testified against cruelty and wrong, of which there was no lack in
those days.

Under his influence Martin was becoming moulded like pliant wax,
the boy of the greenwood was losing all his rusticity, and yet,
retaining his keen love of nature, was learning to look beyond
nature to nature's God. At times Martin was very weary of
Kenilworth, and almost wished himself back in the greenwood again,
so little was he in sympathy with the companions whom he had found.

But one day the earl called him aside, and with a tenderness one
could not have expected from that great statesman and mighty
warrior, broke the sad tidings to the poor boy of the death of his
ill-fated mother. It had arrived from Michelham; an outlaw had
brought the news to the priory, with the request that the monks
would send the tidings on to young Martin, wherever he might be.
The death of his poor mother at last severed the ties which bound
Martin to the greenwood; he longed after it no more; save that he
often had daydreams wherein, as a brother of Saint Francis, he
preached the glad tidings of the grace of God to his kindred after
the flesh in the green glades of the Sussex woods.