hermitage. He had been sixteen years a seaman now, with a seaman's
temptations--it may be (as he told Reginald plainly) with some of a
seaman's vices. He may have done things which lay heavy on his
conscience. But it was getting time to think about his soul. He
took the cross, and went off to Jerusalem, as many a man did then,
under difficulties incredible, dying, too often, on the way. But
Godric not only got safe thither, but went out of his way home by
Spain to visit the sanctuary of St. James of Compostella, a see
which Pope Calixtus II. had just raised to metropolitan dignity.

Then he appears as steward to a rich man in the Fens, whose sons and
young retainers, after the lawless fashion of those Anglo-Norman
times, rode out into the country round to steal the peasants' sheep
and cattle, skin them on the spot, and pass them off to the master
of the house as venison taken in hunting. They ate and drank,
roystered and rioted, like most other young Normans; and vexed the
staid soul of Godric, whose nose told him plainly enough, whenever
he entered the kitchen, that what was roasting had never come off a
deer. In vain he protested and warned them, getting only insults
for his pains. At last he told his lord. The lord, as was to be
expected, cared nought about the matter. Let the lads rob the
English villains: for what other end had their grandfathers
conquered the land? Godric punished himself, as he could not punish
them, for the unwilling share which he had had in the wrong. It may
be that he, too, had eaten of that stolen food. So away he went
into France, and down the Rhone, on pilgrimage to the hermitage of
St. Giles, the patron saint of the wild deer; and then on to Rome a
second time, and back to his poor parents in the Fens.

And now follows a strange and beautiful story. All love of