“There is wisdom in it, truly,” said the monk. “Thou art not all fool, and poet. Natheless, thou canst not come at knowledge my way. What I was needs not to remember, but I was not such as thou, I climbed not upward to my present estate. But thou must climb through the church, 't is thy one way. With thy little learning what art thou fit for else? Doth it suit thee to turn ploughman?”
The dreamer looked at his scholar's hands and wiped his scholar's brow: “But I will not climb as a monk,” he cried. “There 's work to do out-o'-doors to make the church clean. Let me go!”
Then Brother Owyn wiped his brushes on the grass and covered his little paint pots; and to a boy that came forth of the cloister he said: “I have business with the prior, keep thy task till I come again;” and rising up he made so as to lay a cloth of fair linen over the little picture.
“Who is 't?” asked the dreamer, and gazing, he minded him of the day when Brother Owyn came first to Malvern Priory. He was a knight that day; his mail was silver; he rode a white horse; in his helmet there was set a great pearl in the midst of a ringlet of gold hair, one ring, as 't were severed from the head of a babe.
“Who is 't?” quoth the dreamer.
And Brother Owyn answered him: “Neither do I write but only yesterdays. I have my vision of the morrow. 'T is of a Holy City, and the Lord is King thereof. 'T is a true vision, for John, the beloved, he had it afore my time.”
“But this is a fair damsel,” said the dreamer.
“This is my little daughter dear, that was dead at two years old. The King hath chosen her for his bride. I live seeking after her.”
“Here, likewise, hast thou fellowship with thy kind,” the dreamer sighed. “Little wonder thy songs touch the hearts of men. Master, thou hast my confession this five year; thou knowest me, that I am no hot man; yet, do I yearn to fathom these mysteries, for fellowship's sake, and to help all them that seek truth. But how may a man climb to fatherhood through Holy Church?”
Brother Owyn laid his hand on the dreamer's lip, and “Hush!” said he; “here's question for one higher than I, and to be spoke whispering. For all the man I am to Godward, am I by the love of a little two years' child, long dead. Go; say thy prayers! I 'll come to thee in the church. Haply the prior may give thee a letter to a London priest, will see thee clerked and set to earn, thy bread.”