The hermit’s eyes looked far away. “You will not have to search,” he said gently. “If you serve him well, he will come to you.”
Next morning Offero and the hermit set out for the river. But hardly were they down the mountain when every traveler called out to them to turn back. “The river is in a fury,” they cried. “No man could reach the other side alive.”
The hermit shook his head. “Come and see,” he said. “For I have a trusty ferryman here who can weather any flood.” So Offero and the hermit kept on; and the travelers followed, wondering.
The river beat against its banks, and the waves rushed white with foam. Offero pulled up a stout green tree to steady himself, and waded in till he could feel the cruel whirlpools sweeping around his ankles. Then lifting the hermit to his broad, firm shoulder, he plunged fearlessly into the raging stream. The water swirled and hissed about him. It rose to his great chest, and wet the edge of the hermit’s robe. But it was of no avail against the giant. He towered through it as solid as a cliff, and set the hermit safely on the other side.
A great “bravo” went up from the watching people; and when Offero came back, they gathered about him, clamoring to be carried. So Offero began his service of the king whom he had never seen.
Day and night he kept at it,—in the spring when the river was high and surly, in the winter when it was chilling and swift. To be within call always, he built himself a hut on the bank; and there was no one who knocked, however haughty or humble, that Offero did not take upon his shoulder and carry safely through the river.
So every day Offero’s great face grew more kindly and his shoulders more patient. But always in his heart there was a kind of longing wonder whether the King would really seek him out, as the hermit had said; and whether Christ was indeed the greatest king, afraid of no one. “If Christ would only come!” he thought; and sometimes in the depths of night he would start up and unbar the door, thinking that he heard the knock of the King. But it was only the wind, or now and again some belated pilgrim begging to be carried across the river.
One black night when the rain lashed the hut, and the river ran high and wild, Offero awoke to a sound that was not the storm. “A knock!” said his listening heart. “A knock!” Or was it after all a dream? No pilgrim, not even the fearless King would travel a night like this.
Nevertheless Offero sprang up, lit his great, rude lantern, and threw open the door. A drenching blast blew away his breath, but there on the threshold, in the gusty light was a pilgrim indeed,—a little child with his cloak running with rain.