The Sin of the Prince Bishop 173

church lay the image of the new-born Child
on the cold straw, and at His haloed head
stood the images of the ox and the ass. Far
out across the snow-roofed city, far away
over the white glistening country rang the
glad music of the tower. People who went to
their doors to listen cried in astonishment:
“Fark! what strange music is that? It
sounds as if the lowing of cattle were mingled
with the chimes of the bells.” In truth it
was so. And in every byre the oxen and the
kine answered the strange sweet cadences
with their lowing, and the great stone oxen
lowed back to their kin of the meadow
through the deep notes of the joy-peal.

In the fulness of time the Prince Bishop
Evrard died and was buried as he had willed,
with his face humbly turned to the earth ;
and to this day the weather-wasted figure of
the little girl looks down on him from her
niche, and the slab over his grave serves as
a stepping-stone to pious feet.