"A great frock.And this is the cape to't.""Ot's it for?"
"To keep his body from the cold; and the cape is for his shoulders, or to go over his head like the country folk.'Tis for a hermit.""Ot's a 'ermit?"
"A holy man that lives in a cave all by himself.""In de dark?"
"Ay, whiles."
"Oh."
In the morning Reicht was sent to the hermit with the pelisse, and a pound of thick candles.
As she was going out of the door Margaret said to her, "Said you whose son Gerard was?""Nay, not I."
"Think, girl! How could he call him Gerard, son of Eli, if you had not told him?"Reicht persisted she had never mentioned him but as plain Gerard.
But Margaret told her flatly she did not believe her; at which Reicht was affronted, and went out with a little toss of the head.
However, she determined to question the hermit again, and did not doubt he would be more liberal in his communication when he saw his nice new pelisse and the candles.
She had not been gone long when Giles came in with ill news.
The living of Gouda would be kept vacant no longer.
Margaret was greatly distressed at this.
"Oh, Giles," said she, "ask for another month.They will give thee another month, maybe."He returned in an hour to tell her he could not get a month.
"They have given me a week," said he."And what is a week?""Drowning bodies catch at strawen," was her reply." A week? a little week?"Reicht came back from her errand out of spirits.Her oracle had declined all further communication.So at least its obstinate silence might fairly be interpreted.
The next day Margaret put Reicht in charge of the shop, and disappeared all day.So the next day, and so the next.Nor would she tell any one where she had been.Perhaps she was ashamed.The fact is, she spent all those days on one little spot of ground.
When they thought her dreaming, she was applying to every word that fell from Joan and Reicht the whole powers of a far acuter mind than either of them possessed.
She went to work on a scale that never occurred to either of them.
She was determined to see the hermit, and question him face to face, not through a wall.She found that by making a circuit she could get above the cave, and look down without being seen by the solitary.But when she came to do it, she found an impenetrable mass of brambles.After tearing her clothes, and her hands and feet, so that she was soon covered with blood, the resolute, patient girl took out her scissors and steadily snipped and cut till she made a narrow path through the enemy.But so slow was the work that she had to leave it half done.The next day she had her scissors fresh ground, and brought a sharp knife as well, and gently, silently, cut her way to the roof of the cave.There she made an ambush of some of the cut brambles, so that the passers-by might not see her, and couched with watchful eye till the hermit should come out.She heard him move underneath her.But he never left his cell.She began to think it was true that he only came out at night.
The next day she came early and brought a jerkin she was making for little Gerard, and there she sat all day, working, and watching with dogged patience.
At four o'clock the birds began to feed; and a great many of the smaller kinds came fluttering round the cave, and one or two went in.But most of them, taking a preliminary seat on the bushes, suddenly discovered Margaret, and went off with an agitated flirt of their little wings.And although they sailed about in the air, they would not enter the cave.Presently, to encourage them, the hermit, all unconscious of the cause of their tremors, put out a thin white hand with a few crumbs in it, Margaret laid down her work softly, and gliding her body forward like a snake, looked down at it from above; it was but a few feet from her.It was as the woman described it, a thin, white hand.
Presently the other hand came out with a piece of bread, and the two hands together broke it and scattered the crumbs.
But that other hand had hardly been out two seconds ere the violet eyes that were watching above dilated; and the gentle bosom heaved, and the whole frame quivered like a leaf in the wind.
What her swift eye had seen I leave the reader to guess.She suppressed the scream that rose to her lips, but the effort cost her dear.Soon the left hand of the hermit began to swim indistinctly before her gloating eyes; and with a deep sigh her head drooped, and she lay like a broken lily.
She was in a deep swoon, to which perhaps her long fast to-day and the agitation and sleeplessness of many preceding days contributed.