hands clasped, fingers to fingers, and his eyes open but seeing nothing;
and if it had not been for the sin in my soul (on which God have pity!)
I might have seen, too, the heavenly company that often went with him
and of which he told me.

Before the hut lay a long garden-bed, in which the holy youth grew beans
in their season, and other vegetables at other times; for it was on
these, with nuts from the hazelwood, and grasses of which I know not the
names (though he has told me of them many times), with water from the
stream, that he sustained his life.

On either side of the hut stood a great may-tree; it was on account of
these that he had built his little house here, for he knew the
properties and divine significations of such things.

The house itself was of wattles, plastered with mud from the brook, and
thatched with straw. There was a door of wood that he leaned against the
opening on this side when he prayed, but not when he slept, and a little
square window high up upon the other side that looked into the green
wood. It is of that same door that saint Giles' new altar was made, for
the house fell down after his going, and the wind blew about the mud and
the sticks, and the pilgrims have now carried all away. I took the door
myself, when I came back and had seen him go through the heavenly door
to our Lord.

The house within was a circle, three strides across, with a domed roof
like a bee-hive as high as a man at the sides and half as high again in
the centre. On the left lay his straw for a bed, and above it on the
wall the little square of linen that he took afterwards with him to
London, worked with the five precious wounds of our Saviour. On the