And sometimes in the long winter evenings, when the fire sparkled brightly and the old man was garrulous with joy, he would tell how he once entered a hostile castle as a minnesinger with a noble lover, and how the knight defied the angry father.

Yet he never revealed that this knight was the generous abbot who now supplied them with the means of innocent mirth, who ministered to all their wants, and whose life was so meek and blameless.

For Gilbert de Hers was abbot in the cells that had once been the halls of his sires.
And one word, reader.

It was not after the Lady Margaret's death that he embraced the resolution of dedicating himself to God, but on the battle-field of the Elster, and over the corpse of Rodolph of Suabia.
He had proved his sincerity in the wars of Matilda, and when he quitted the princess for Monte Cassino, it was to assume the habit of the novice.
* * * * * One bright afternoon in the fall of 1126, two aged men were walking arm-in-arm toward the Church of the Nativity.

One was attired as a Benedictine, the other as a knight.