“Praise be to God, who sent you this way to-night,” said the monk. Kristin saw that his whole body was shaking. “I was coming north to you folks, but my legs would carry me no further this night. Almost I deemed ’twas God’s will that I should lie down and die on the roads I have been wandering about on all my life. But I was fain to see you once again, my daughter—”
Kristin helped the monk up on her horse; then led it homeward by the bridle, holding him on. And, all the time he was lamenting that now she would get her feet wet in the icy slush, she could hear him moaning softly with pain.
He told her that he had been at Eyabu since Yule. Some rich farmers of the parish had vowed in the bad year to beautify their church with new adornments. But the work had gone slowly; he had been sick the last of the winter—the evil was in his stomach—it could bear no food, and he vomited blood. He believed himself he had not long to live, and he longed now to be home in his cloister, for he was fain to die there among his own brethren. But he had a mind first to come north up the Dale one last time, and so he had set out, along with the monk who came from Hamar to be the new prior of the pilgrim hospice at Roaldstad. From Fron he had come on alone.
“I heard that you were betrothed,” he said, “to that man—and then such a longing came on me to see you. It seemed to me a sore thing that that should be our last meeting, that time in our church at Oslo. It has been a heavy burden on my heart, Kristin, that you had strayed away into the path where is no peace—”
Kristin kissed the monk’s hand:
“Truly I know not, Father, what I have done, or how deserved, that you show me such great love.”
The monk answered in a low voice:
“I have thought many a time, Kristin, that had it so befallen we had met more often, then might you have come to be as my daughter in the spirit.”
“Mean you that you would have brought me to turn my heart to the holy life of the cloister?” asked Kristin. Then, a little after, she said: “Sira Eirik laid a command on me that, should I not win my father’s consent and be wed with Erlend, then must I join with a godly sisterhood and make atonement for my sins—”
“I have prayed many a time that the longing for the holy life might come to you,” said Brother Edwin. “But not since you told me that you wot of—I would have had you come to God, wearing your garland, Kristin—”