happy, and I would have said no word to grieve him; and yet belike my
eyes looked wonder on him: he seemed to note it and his face grew
puzzled. "How deemest thou of these things?" said he: "why do men die
else, if it be otherwise than this?"

I smiled: "Why then do they live?" said I.

Even in the white moonlight I saw his face flush, and he cried out in
a great voice, "To do great deeds or to repent them that they ever
were born." "Yea," said I, "they live to live because the world
liveth." He stretched out his hand to me and grasped mine, but said
no more; and went on till we came to the door in the rood-screen; then
he turned to me with his hand on the ring-latch, and said, "Hast thou
seen many dead men?"

"Nay, but few," said I.

"And I a many," said he; "but come now and look on these, our friends
first and then our foes, so that ye may not look to see them while we
sit and talk of the days that are to be on the earth before the Day of
Doom cometh."

So he opened the door, and we went into the chancel; a light burned on
the high altar before the host, and looked red and strange in the
moonlight that came through the wide traceried windows unstained by
the pictures and beflowerings of the glazing; there were new stalls
for the priests and vicars where we entered, carved more abundantly
and beautifully than any of the woodwork I had yet seen, and
everywhere was rich and fair colour and delicate and dainty form. Our
dead lay just before the high altar on low biers, their faces all