her and went up to the sick man, and said: 'Sir Knight, in spite of all
the sickness about you, you yourself better strangely, and another month
will see you with your sword girt to your side again.' 'Thanks, kind
master Hugh,' he said, but impatiently, as if his mind were on other
things, and he turned in his bed away from me restlessly.

"And till late that night I ministered to the sick in that hospital; but
when I went away, I walked down to the sea, and paced there to and fro
over the hard sand: and the moon showed bloody with the hot mist, which
the sea would not take on its bosom, though the dull east wind blew it
onward continually. I walked there pondering till a noise from over the
sea made me turn and look that way; what was that coming over the sea?
Laus Deo! the WEST WIND: Hurrah! I feel the joy I felt then over again
now, in all its intensity. How came it over the sea? first, far out to
sea, so that it was only just visible under the red-gleaming moonlight,
far out to sea, while the mists above grew troubled, and wavered, a long
level bar of white; it grew nearer quickly, it gathered form, strange,
misty, intricate form--the ravelled foam of the green sea; then oh!
hurrah! I was wrapped in it,--the cold salt spray--drenched with it,
blinded by it, and when I could see again, I saw the great green waves
rising, nodding and breaking, all coming on together; and over them from
wave to wave leaped the joyous WEST WIND; and the mist and the plague
clouds were sweeping back eastward in wild swirls; and right away were
they swept at last, till they brooded over the face of the dismal
stagnant meres, many miles away from our fair city, and there they
pondered wrathfully on their defeat.

"But somehow my life changed from the time when I beheld the two lovers,
and I grew old quickly." He ceased; then after a short silence said
again: "And that was long ago, very long ago, I know not when it