the more miraculous because it had come of a sudden. One day he had
been even duller than usual, and was beaten and told to know his
lesson better on the morrow or be sent into a lower class among
little boys who would make a joke of him. He had gone out in tears,
and when he came the next day, although his stupidity, born of a mind
that would listen to every wandering sound and brood upon every
wandering light, had so long been the byword of the school, he knew
his lesson so well that he passed to the head of the class, and from
that day was the best of scholars. At first Brother Dove thought this
was an answer to his own prayers to the Virgin, and took it for a
great proof of the love she bore him; but when many far more fervid
prayers had failed to add a single wheatsheaf to the harvest, he
began to think that the child was trafficking with bards, or druids,
or witches, and resolved to follow and watch. He had told his thought
to the abbot, who bid him come to him the moment he hit the truth;
and the next day, which was a Sunday, he stood in the path when the
abbot and the Brothers were coming from vespers, with their white
habits upon them, and took the abbot by the habit and said, 'The
beggar is of the greatest of saints and of the workers of miracle. I
followed Olioll but now, and by his slow steps and his bent head I
saw that the weariness of his stupidity was over him, and when he
came to the little wood by the quern-house I knew by the path broken
in the under-wood and by the footmarks in the muddy places that he
had gone that way many times. I hid behind a bush where the path
doubled upon itself at a sloping place, and understood by the tears
in his eyes that his stupidity was too old and his wisdom too new to
save him from terror of the rod. When he was in the quern-house I
went to the window and looked in, and the birds came down and perched
upon my head and my shoulders, for they are not timid in that holy
place; and a wolf passed by, his right side shaking my habit, his