Chapter I: Preface

THROUGH this little book runs the road of life, the common road of men, the white highway that Hilarius watched from the monastery gate and Brother Ambrose saw nearing its end in the Jerusalem of his heart.

The book is a romance. It may be read as a romance of the Black Death and a monk with an artist’s eyes; but for the author it is a romance of the Image of God. While the Divine Face is being unveiled for Hilarius in the masque that shocks and bewilders him, and the secret of sorrow and sin, of death and life and love, is told by his speechless and dying “little maid,” we, if we choose, may hear again the Road mender’s epilogue to the story of the man of this earth, the man of the common highway:—“‘Dust and ashes and a house of devils,’ he cries; and there comes back for answer, ‘_Rex concupiscet decorem tuum_.’”

CONTENTS

_PART I_
THE SEED
CHAP. PAGE
I. BLIND EYES IN THE FOREST 3
II. THE LOVE OF PRIOR STEPHEN 15
III. THE KING’S SONG-BIRD 22
_PART II_
THE FLOWER
I. THE CITY OF PURE GOLD 39
II. THE CITY THAT HILARIUS SAW 49
III. A SENDING FROM THE LORD 55
IV. BLIND EYES WHICH COULD SEE 64
V. THE WHITE WAY AND WHERE IT LED 72
VI. A DARK FINDING 82
VII. THE COMING OF HUNGER AND LOVE 97
_PART III_
THE FRUIT
I. HOW LONG, O LORD, HOW LONG! 117
II. MARY’S LILIES 124
III. OPEN EYES AT THE GATE 133
IV. THE PASSING OF PRIOR STEPHEN 141
V. “GABRIEL, MAKE THIS MAN TO UNDERSTAND THE 147
VISION.”—DAN. viii. 16.
VI. THE HUNGER OF DICKON THE WOODMAN 154
VII. THE VISION OF THE EVENING AND THE MORNING 160
VIII. “BEHOLD THE FIELDS ARE WHITE” 165

_PART I_ THE SEED