"I think he would have been happy here," she said, and turned heartsick away.
On their return, Reicht Heynes proposed to her to go and consult the hermit.
"What," said Margaret, "Joan has been at you. She is the one for hermits. I'll go, if 'tis but to show thee they know no more than we do." And they went to the cave.
It was an excavation partly natural, partly artificial, in a bank of rock overgrown by brambles. There was a rough stone door on hinges, and a little window high up, and two apertures, through one of which the people announced their gifts to the hermit, and put questions of all sorts to him; and, when he chose to answer, his voice came dissonant and monstrous out at another small aperture.
On the face of the rock this line was cut—
Felix qui in Domino nirus ab orbe fugit.
Margaret observed to her companion that this was new since she was here last.
"Ay," said Reicht, "like enough," and looked up at it with awe. Writing even on paper she thought no trifle: but on rock!
She whispered, "'Tis a far holier hermit than the last; he used to come in the town now and then; but this one ne'er shows his face to mortal man."
"And that is holiness?"