The face which looked in seemed not quite
unknown to him, though he could not recall where he had seen it.
'You have slept long, dear brother,' said Marcus, with a happy
smile. 'Is all well with you?'
'Well, God he thanked,' was the clear but faint reply.
The poet-physician, a small, nervous, bright-eyed man of some forty
years, sat down on a stool by the bedside and began talking
cheerfully. He had just come from matins, and was this morning
excused from lauds because it behoved him to gather certain herbs,
to be used medicinally in the case of a brother who had fallen sick
yesterday. Touching a little gold locket which Basil wore round his
neck on a gold thread he asked what this contained, and being told
that it was a morsel of the Crown of Thorns, he nodded with
satisfaction.
'We questioned whether to leave it on you or not, for we could not
open it, and there was a fear lest it might contain something'--he
smiled and shook his bead and sighed--'much less sacred. The lord
abbot, doubtless'--here his voice sank--'after a vision, though
of this he spoke not, decided that it should be left.
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