Other pilgrims or patients came to him after that mother with her child. He persuaded three or four of them to carry letters to the doctor in the town. But he prayed for these too, and signed them with oil from the Shrine lamp, ere he trusted them to his friend's salves or surgery. By and by came three young men with a boy. He was stricken and mad, they said. He had come home from work in a distant town last month. Now he would stay speechless for hours. He would wander far by day, and brood over the fire by night.
'Let him stay if he will,' Greenwood said. 'Let him wait in peace here, and eat and sleep his fill, if he so desires. If he shall sleep in the Holy Place a few nights, who can say what wonder Christ may do?'
The boy seemed to be an old friend of his, and stayed quietly by him. His companions started off joyously down the hill, one of them playing on the marimba. 'This is Merrie England come again,' said I. 'Did not an unburnt Lollard upbraid the bagpipe din or other music of pilgrims long ago? Wasn't that "lewd losel" told by the Kentish Archbishop how useful such music might be say if a pilgrim struck his toe on a stone?'
'There are many pilgrims at this Shrine,' said Greenwood smiling.
'I am glad about it. I think she would be glad if she knew.'
'Where is she?' I asked. 'Doesn't she know?'
'I have tried hard to track her,' he said. 'Not a trace have I found. I have asked our missions, I have asked the White Fathers. I have asked Africans and Scots and Dutch and Portuguese. But she has gone on her way out of sight.'
'She has done some work here,' I said.
'Yes,' he said, 'Angel or Saint, Faith Healer or Revenante from Paradise, she has worked wonders here. Do you know, there is a simple native cure I have ever so much faith in? It comes from the root of a tree. Have not some men and women the same sort of virtue in their wills and hands that trees have in their roots? I seem to see men and women such as Father John of Kronstadt and this my Saint Lucy of the Ship even as trees walking.
The outstanding virtue of my patroness was surely in her blossom, and in the fruit that blossom can yet bring forth. "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood" I found her. I sat down under her shadow for those moments of time. And now, and all my days of grace, will her fruit be sweet to my taste.'