The White Robe

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  Herewith begins the history of that Odo, called Le Noir, who nevertheless, even as the morning star makes light the womb of a black cloud, shone with the bright beams of his life and teaching; who by his radiance led into the light them that shivered in the gray cloud of the shadow of death; and who, like unto the rainbow giving light in the white clouds, set forth in his righteous ending the seal of his fond Master’s covenant.

  His life, or legend, narrates at outset that Odo had tended the sheep of Guillaume Diaz for nearly a year before he went into the Druid wood which is called Bovion, with Pierre la Charonne. It was thus that, under an elm tree, young Odo, who was as yet a little stained with the dust of his worldly journeying, first saw the Lord of the Forest.

  That dark Master gave a wolf skin to each of the boys and a pot of ointment with which a man might anoint his body whensoever he was wearied of inhabiting it. The Master, also, after they had made a covenant with him and had tendered homage to both of his faces, baptized the boys, after the quaint formula of his very old religion, with the new and secret names of Prettyman and Princox.

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