“Why so thoughtful?” said the Hospitaler to the Knight of the Golden Cross, who marched along with his cloak partly shielding his face.
“I’m living in the past,” he sententiously answered.
“The past? Ah, to make up by a back journey for an expected briefing of thy future?”
“No, raillery here, Hospitaler. I was just wishing that since we are so near Endor, Saul’s witch would call up some saintly Samuel to tell us where we shall be this time to-morrow.”
“Oh, Golden Cross, know we can best bear the good or evil of the future by seeing it only as it comes; for me, I prefer to think of another place, near us, but having a more helpful incident for the memory of such as we.”
“Dost thou mean Nain?”
“The same. There a dead only son was raised from the bier to comfort a widowed mother.”
“Well said, Hospitaler,” responded Sir Charleroy, “and let us not forget that it was a mother’s tearful prayers that won the working of the miracle.”
“Alas, knight,” sighed the Templar, “we have no mothers to so petition for us here, if we be quenched ere long.”
“Some of us have living mothers who never cease to pray for us, nor will until their breath ceases. In this land, where God appeared through motherhood, I have a strong confidence that our mothers’ prayers, re-enforced by our appealing but unvoiced needs, will move the motherhood of God, if such I may call His tenderest lovings. I’ll trust to-night my mother’s prayers, reaching from England to Heaven and from thence to here, further than all the sympathy forgetful Europe will vouchsafe us. A nation cheered us to battle, and yet it will never seek for the fragments defeat has left; but the man never lived, no matter what his ill deserts, whom true mother love and eternal God love ever forgot.” After this long address, Sir Charleroy again felt the glow within and the approvings that he felt on the quay when the bishop’s hands were on his head.