thunderous afternoon of summer;"--then across his chant ran the old man's
shrill voice: "On an October day, packed close with heavy-lying mist,
which was more than mere autumn-mist:"--the solemn stately chanting
dropped, the shrill voice went on; Giles sank down again, and Hugh
standing there, swaying to and fro to the measured ringing of his own
shrill voice, his long beard moving with him, said:--

"On such a day, warm, and stifling so that one could scarcely breathe
even down by the sea-shore, I went from bed to bed in the hospital of the
pest-laden city with my soothing draughts and medicines. And there went
with me a holy woman, her face pale with much watching; yet I think even
without those same desolate lonely watchings her face would still have
been pale. She was not beautiful, her face being somewhat
peevish-looking; apt, she seemed, to be made angry by trifles, and, even
on her errand of mercy, she spoke roughly to those she tended:--no, she
was not beautiful, yet I could not help gazing at her, for her eyes were
very beautiful and looked out from her ugly face as a fair maiden might
look from a grim prison between the window-bars of it.

"So, going through that hospital, I came to a bed at last, whereon lay
one who had not been struck down by fever or plague, but had been smitten
through the body with a sword by certain robbers, so that he had narrowly
escaped death. Huge of frame, with stern suffering face he lay there;
and I came to him, and asked him of his hurt, and how he fared, while the
day grew slowly toward even, in that pest-chamber looking toward the
west; the sister came to him soon and knelt down by his bed-side to tend
him.

"O Christ! As the sun went down on that dim misty day, the clouds and
the thickly-packed mist cleared off, to let him shine on us, on that