CHAPTER XII
Silver Cross went in procession. The Abbot with the Prior of Westforest walked ahead and there followed chanting monks. Then came lay Brothers and villagers and a quarter of the countryside and a half-score from Middle Forest. The Lord of Montjoy walked. Bright was the morning, high and crisp; white frost on ground. Rounding the hill they cried, “The fir tree!”
They knew not how it was, but the tree, the first confirmation, seemed to spring before them, magical, mighty, a veritable tree of life. Many may have noted it before, through the years, standing like a sentinel before the hill, and thought only, “A great tree, with good shade for shepherds in hot summer tide!” But now marvel clothed it.
The wind began to play through the stretched wires of Imagination. The harp was sounding.
It was the Prior of Westforest who cried, “Lo, the fallen earth! Not touched from without, but pushed from within!”
It lay in truth, sod, earth and rock, to right and left, as though Might would come forth and had done so.
The procession broke from column into a throng as of bees, eyes toward their queen. There was the opening into the hill like a door with a great stone for lintel. The Abbot spoke to the monk Richard. “Read thou!” A breath of assent ran like wind through wheat. “Aye, aye, the one she came to!”
Richard Englefield read the name cut there and gave it to the folk as he had given in Silver Cross church the message. Tall, spare, gold-brown, in daily seeming stripped to simplicity and quietude, but now with that around him that made for catching of the breath, he stood and read and turned and gave the name of the Blessed among women.