Nevertheless, Brother Owyn was sore perplexed. Having that vision of the Holy City ever before his eyes, and his daughter awaiting him on the other side of the River of Death, he was altogether minded to keep him from heresy. He began to be an old man now; haply the time was short till he might enter into that other Kingdom. Was Master John Wyclif the Devil, who taketh the word out of the mouth of Dame Truth? Yet a many of those men, even his enemies who reviled him for his doctrine, revered him for a holy man and a scholar. Some said there was not so great a man in England, nor so good, as John Wyclif. Here, then, was the old perplexity, to know what was truth. But Brother Owyn erred in that he thought to save his soul alive by flight.
“Malvern coveteth a hermit,” he mused; “but if I go apart, and sleep in a cave, and never wash me, nor cut my beard, straightway there 'll be a flocking of great folk to look on me, and to question me of their wives' honour, and of the likelihood of these French wars, for that I 'm a holy man. Alack, my Margaret, my Pearl, now lead me out of this quandary away into a quiet place to pray, for John Wyclif's word draweth. Soon I 'll be a heretic and accursed.”
Hereupon Brother Owyn lifted up his eyes, and suddenly cried out aloud; for, on the other side of the burn, there stood a golden-haired maid.
“Ho! thou hast lost a fine fish, see him!—gone!” cried a merry voice, and the boy that was the King of England came a-leaping and laughing from stone to stone across the sun-flecked water. After him tiptoed the maid, but the squire with the two horses bode on the farther side.
“Nay, climb not to thy feet, good brother,” said the King. “Thy fright hath shaken thee; in sooth, we meant it not.”
“My lord, my lord,” murmured Brother Owyn, and there were tears in his eyes; “methought 't was my young daughter come to take me home,—home where a man sinneth no more, and the walls of the city are jasper, and the gates are twelve pearls.” He covered his face with his hands, and the tears trickled down his beard.
Richard knelt beside him and put his arm about the bent shoulders: “Oh, but I 'm sorry!” he said distressfully. “Don't weep! prythee, don't weep!”
“If I be not thy daughter, yet my father was as a son to thee,” Calote assured him, kneeling at his other side. “'T was thou taught him to sing, and to-day he 's sent his song to thee.”
Brother Owyn had lifted up his face to look on her, and now he touched her bright hair, soft, with his finger, and “Will Langland's voice was wonderly sweet,‘ said he, ’and low. 'T is nigh on thirty years since he went out from Malvern, but his was not a voice to be forgot. His daughter, thou?—He ever did the thing he had not meant to do.” He looked on her with a curiosity most benevolent, staying his gaze a long while at her eyes; and:—
“Doth Will Langland sing at court?” he asked.