- THE WHITE WAY AND WHERE IT LED
IT was a bitterly cold night and St Agnes' Eve; the snow fell heavily, caught into whirling eddies by the keen north wind.
Hilarius and the Friar, crossing an empty waste of bleak unprotected heath, met the full force of the blast, and each moment the snow grew denser, the darkness more complete. They struggled on, breathless, beaten, exhausted and lost; Hilarius, leading the Friar by one hand, held the other across his bent head to shield himself from the buffets of the wind.
Suddenly he stood fast.
"I can no more, Father," he said, "the snow is as a wall; there is naught to see or to hear; I deem we are far from our right way."
His voice was very weak, and he caught at the Friar for support.
"I will pray the Lord, my son, that He open thine eyes, even as He opened the eyes of the prophet's servant in the besieged city; so shalt thou see a host of angels encompassing us, for we are about the Lord's business."
"Nay, my Father," said Hilarius feebly, "I see no angels, and I perish." He tottered, and would have fallen, but the Friar caught him in his arms. A moment he stood irresolute, the boy on his breast, then flung away his staff and lifted him to his shoulder.
With unerring, confident step he went forward through the snow, a white figure bearing a white burden in a white world. All at once the wind dropped, the blinding shower ceased, and Hilarius, rested and comforted, spoke:-"Is it thou, my Father?"
"It is I, my son, but angels are on either hand and go before to guide. The snow hath ceased, canst thou walk?"
He set Hilarius gently on his feet, and lo! he found the stars alight!
The boy gave a cry, and forgetting his companion's darkness, pointed to the left where lay a snow-clad village.
"A miracle, a miracle, my Father!"
"A miracle, i' faith, my son: the Lord hath given guidance to the blind as He promised. Let us go down."
They went by the white way under the stars; and Hilarius was full of awe and comfort because of the angels of God which attended on a poor friar.
At the village hostel they found rough but friendly entertainment and several guests. They dried themselves at a roaring fire, and Hilarius made a hearty meal; the Friar would eat nothing save a morsel of bread.
A messenger was there, a short stout man with stubbly beard, bright black eyes like beads, and a high colour. He was riding with despatches from the King to the Abbat at Bury, and had fearful tales to tell of the Plague; how in London they piled the dead in trenches, while many who escaped the pest died of want and cold; it was a city of the dead rather than the living. One great lord, travelling post-haste from Westminster, had been found by his servants to have the disorder, and they fled, leaving him by the wayside to perish.
Hilarius heard horror-struck.
"'Tis a grievous shame so to desert a sick master," he said.
"Nay, lad," said a chapman in the corner, "but a man loves his own skin best."
"Ay, ay," said a fat ruddy-faced miller, overtaken by the storm on his way to a neighbouring village, "a man's own skin before all.
Fill your belly first and your neighbour's afterwards. Live and let live."
"Ay, let live," chimed in mine host, bustling in with a stoop of cider for the chapman, "but, by the Rood, 'tis cruel work when two lone women are murdered for a bit of mouldy bacon and a lump of bread; for I'se warrant 'tis a long day sin' they had more than that at best."
The chapman took his cider.
"Where was this work done?" he said.
"Nay, where but here on the bruary! The women were found Wednesday se'n-night by the herd as he went folding. They lay on the floor in their blood."
Hilarius turned sick. In Westminster, by some miracle, he had been spared the sight of violent death - ay, or of death in any form - and had seen nothing worse than a rogue in the stocks, for which sight he had thanked Heaven piously.
"'Tis the fault of the rich," said a voice, and Hilarius saw, to his surprise, that there was a second friar in the room; a tall, bullet-headed man, with a heavy, obstinate jaw ornamented with a scanty fringe of black hair.
"The rich grow fat, and the poor starve," he went on, "'tis hunger makes a man kill his brother for a mouthful of mouldy bacon."
"Nay," said the miller, "there was no need to kill, Father. A man could have taken the meat from two lone women and left them their lives."
"Why take from folk as poor as themselves?" said mine host. "Let them rob the rich an they must rob."
