From far and wide, rich and poor, old and young, men, women, and children came in pilgrimage to that holy site.
None ever knew, except one humble little peasant, from whence the cross had come.
But Radu, the shepherd, held his peace, thanking the Kind Mother of Christ for having thus ordained that so many pious believers should go and pray on the grave where the dreamer of dreams had buried his love.
One morning when the warm rays of the sun were lying like a blessing over the deserted waste, a white bird might have been seen descending out of the blue.
It hovered for a time over the gleaming sword, circling very slowly, so that its outspread wings resembled a snowy cloud floating in the air.
Then down it swooped out of the heavens, there, where Stella lay beneath the dark heavy mould. Within its beak this unknown bird was holding a simple seed, which it dropped on the very spot where the dead girl's heart rested under the sod—a seed it had carried from a distant land of the north from the tenderly tended grave in a great king's garden. Hardly had the seed touched the barren earth than it sprang up and spread all over the tomb a thick network of rambling thorns covered with countless roses—as crimson as the broken heart of a lover.
And these roses bloomed, even in the winter months, upon the icy covering of snow, red as the reddest blood, till all the simple folk declared that indeed the place was Holy Ground.
And thus it was that God blessed the Love of him who once had been called Eric Gundian, the Dreamer of Dreams.
THE END
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