plan that the lad should go straight from one cloister to another.

To Hilarius sitting on the bench in the sun, came one of Eleanor's
tirewomen to bid him wait on her mistress. He rose at once and
followed her through the hall and up the winding stair, along a
gallery hung with wondrous story-telling tapestry, to the bower
where Eleanor sat with two of her women busied with their needle.

Hilarius found his mistress, her hands idle on her knee. He louted
low, and she bade him bring a stool and sit beside her.

"I am weary," she said; "this life is weariness. Tell me of the
Monastery and the forest--stay, tell me rather of the New Jerusalem
that Brother Ambrose saw and limned.'

Hilarius, nothing loth, settled himself at her feet, elbow on knee,
and chin on his open hands, his dreamy blue eyes gazing away out of
the window at the cloud-flecked sky above the Abbey pinnacles.

"The Brother Ambrose," he began, "was ever a saintly man, approved
of God and beloved by the Brethren; ay, and a crafty limner, save
that of late his eyesight failed him. To him one night, as he lay
a-bed in the dormitory, came the word of the Lord, saying: "Come,
and I will show thee the Bride, the Lamb's wife." And Brother
Ambrose arose and was carried to a great and high mountain, even as
in the Vision of Blessed John. 'Twas a still night of many stars,
and Brother Ambrose, looking up, saw a radiant path in the heavens;
and lo! the stars gathered themselves together on either side until
they stood as walls of light, and the four winds lapped him about
as in a mantle and bore him towards the wondrous gleaming roadway.