done with the silver rood — the Bona-Mors rood that
had been his mother's? He had put it away quite
safely, of course, but he could not remember precisely
where. How strange to forget so important a thing;
and he needed it now against Jan's going. In the past
he had always worn it himself, but as time went on
he had found it a burden. It had been so inconveniently
large —just over six inches the cross had measured —
and heavy, its weight had irked his neck; but now he
must find that old silver rood blessed for a holy death
by some saint — a saint whose name he had also
forgotten.
The Cur6 began to ransack his cupboards, growing
always more careless with agitation as he ploughed his
way through the rubbish of years that his indolence
had unwittingly hoarded. With trembling hands he
thrust things aside or flung them down on his study
floor: 'I cannot have lost my mother's rood. Ah, but
no, I cannot!' he kept repeating.
In the end he found it at the bottom of a chest under
three or four pairs of moth-eaten socks, a tobacco
pouch, and a worn-out biretta; there it lay in its faded
morocco case; opening the case the Cure gazed at it.
The silver was wonderfully bright and untarnished,
but the face of the Christ had been worn smooth by
time like that of the patron warrior-bishop, and be-
cause of this the eyes appeared blemished. Was there
something rather dreadful about those eyes — some-
thing thattsuggested wounds? He looked closer.
Then all in|a moment he seemed to envisage those
who groped in a helpless, agonized blindness, their
eyes torn away by the bursting shells, their hands
outstretched in vain supplication. 'Not Jan, oh, not
Jan! Do not let it be Jan!3 And yet they were Jan,
all those groping men; their moans were his moans
for their pain was his pain, and the blood that oozed
from their wounds was his also.
410