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352 The abbess asked with great kindness, “Is there aught I can do for thee?”

The pilgrim lifted his head. “Dear Lady Aastrid!” he said, “my dear Lady Abbess—”

The abbess started back with a faint cry of amazement.

“Thorgills!” she whispered. “Is it thou in the flesh, or art thou a spirit?”

“It is I—I in my weary body. It is I—in my sorrowful spirit.”

“And our Olaf—our noble-hearted king?” the abbess anxiously demanded.

The pilgrim shook his head sadly.

“Didst thou not find him?”

“Aye! I did find him, only to lose him. I found him in his hermit’s cell in the Holy Land, and there with these same eyes I did see him die,—our king! our brave-hearted Olaf, dying in a hermit’s cave!”

For a moment neither could speak. Then the abbess said gently: “It were well that thou whom he did love so strongly wert with him at the end. Peace to his soul!—our noblest and our bravest! And thou art blind, poor man?”

“I was struck with blindness and long illness in the desert. The fierce sun of Palestine did murder my poor sight.”

The pilgrim paused. A question trembled on his lips. At last he spoke, in a low, unsteady voice: “And she—my wife—my Maidoch? How fares it