Silver Cross

Variant spelling is retained, a very few changes have been made to standardize punctuation and spelling.
SILVER CROSS
By
MARY JOHNSTON
BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1922
Copyright, 1922 By Little, Brown, and Company.
All rights reserved Published March, 1922
Printed in the United States of America

Henry the Seventh sat upon the throne.
The town of Middle Forest had long since pushed the forest from all sides. Its streets, forked as lightning, ran up to the castle and down to the river. The river here was near its mouth, and wide. The bridge that crossed it had many arches. Below the bridge quite large craft, white and brown and dull red, sailed or dropping sail, came to anchor. Answering to hour and weather the water spread carnation, gold, sapphire, jade, opal, lead and ebony. Now it slept glassy, and now wind made of it a fretful, ridged thing. The note of the town was a bleached grey, but with strong splashes of red and umber. A sharp, steep hill upheld the castle that was of middle size and importance, built by the lords Montjoy and held now by William of that name.
Behind the town a downward sloping wood tied the castle hill to fields and meadows. The small river Wander ran by these on its way to join the greater stream. Up the Wander, two leagues or so, in a fertile vale couched the Abbey of Silver Cross. Materially speaking, a knot of stone houses for monks—Cistercians, White Monks—a stately stone house for God and his Son and Mary; near-by a quite unstately hamlet, timber, daub and thatch, grown haphazard by church and cloister; many score broad acres, wood and field, stream and pasture, mill, forge, weirs, and a tenant roll of goodly length,—such was Silver Cross. So far as physical possessions went what in this region Montjoy did not hold Silver Cross did and what the two did not hold Middle Forest had managed to wrest from them in Henry Sixth’s time. Silver Cross had, too, immaterial possessions. But once she had been wealthier here than she was now. That time had been even with a time of material poverty. Now she had goods, but she did not have so much sanctity. Yet there were values still, marked with that other world’s seal; it is useless to doubt that.