I know."

Father Hans had not expected such an answer. His thin, withered cheeks flushed faintly when he heard tell of the Robber Mother's garden, whose beauty outdid the beauty of his own. The monk standing beside the priest reproached her for this talk, saying:

"The beautiful flowers you see here Father Hans has gathered from many places, near and far, and planted and tended until they grew and became the ornament of the cloister. We know full well that no garden in the district of Skåne can match this garden of ours for beauty, order, and richness. But you, a woman who lives in the forest the whole year round — it is not fitting that you should pass judgment on what the venerable priest has made."

The Robber Mother said: "I never meant to set myself up as a judge over you or over him. All I said was this: if you two were given to see the garden I am thinking of, you would pull up every flower planted here and throw it away as you throw away the wild weeds."

The monk's admiration for the garden was no less than the priest's, and he said to the Robber Mother, a sour smile hovering on his lips: "It seems this garden you have planted among the pines of Göinge forest is a marvel! I would stake the salvation of my soul that you have never before today set foot inside the wall of any garden!"

The Robber Mother's cheeks turned crimson with the anger that took hold of her at these words. The monk doubted the truth of what she said! She answered: "It may be true that I have never set foot in a garden before this time. But you priests, you men of the cloister, ought to know that every year, on Christmas Eve, the forest of Göinge is changed into a garden of wondrous beauty, in celebration of the Lord Christ and His blessed coming. We who live in the forest have seen this miracle repeated every year. And I bear witness that the sight of the exquisite, manifold flowers in that verdant garden so bewitched me that I

never dared pull up a single one of them."

The monk was about to speak, but Father Hans checked him. For from the days of his earliest childhood he had heard tell of this forest, and how on Christmas Eve it puts on a raiment of wonderful green. How he had yearned to behold this one of God's manifest signs; yet he had found no way to it.

He begged the Robber Mother eagerly to allow him to visit the robbers' cave on Christmas Eve, to behold God's paradise upon His earth, and entreated her to send him one of her children to show him the way. And he was at pains to assure her that he would keep their secret buried deep within him and never betray them, and that he would reward them to the utmost of his power.

At first the Robber Mother refused the priest's request, for she remembered her husband the Robber and the harm that might come to him if she allowed Father Hans to visit their cave. But in the end her desire to prove the truth of her claim won out. She consented that the priest should visit the robbers' cave, saying: "But you may bring with you one person only; and I have trusted your word that you will not give us away or set a snare to catch us."

Father Hans promised her that he would not break any condition she had named, and swore to her that he would keep his promise. So she went off the way she had come, and the priest leaned toward the monk and told him privately to keep secret the talk that had passed among them and to say nothing of the plan that had been laid. For he feared that if the rest of the priests and monks learned of the matter, they would stand between him and riding out to the robbers' cave, because of his great age.

Father Hans himself meant to speak to no one of this visit; but something happened that had not been reckoned on. Absalon, Bishop of Lund, came to see him one day and spent a night with him.

On the morrow Father Hans and the Bishop went down into the cloister garden for a walk. The priest remembered what had passed between him and the Robber Mother; and the monk who worked in the garden heard him speaking to the Bishop, telling him the story of this woman and of her husband the Robber, so many long years now banished to the far forest, and then asking him to grant the wretched husband his release, so that he might live a quiet, honorable life among the rest of his kind.

The priest said: "This Robber's children are growing up after their father's pattern, and it is to be feared they will outdo him in wickedness when they are grown; before long this band will be mistress of the forest, working havoc in it and all around it."

But Bishop Absalon refused to release this wicked Robber, for he could not endure to picture him free and at large, roaming and making merry in the village among his good countrymen. Far better that he stay where he was, in his exile in the forest.

Then Father Hans took courage and told the Bishop the story of Göinge forest — how on Christmas Eve, before the robbers' cave, it clothes itself in an exquisite spring raiment. The priest said: "If these outlaws were wicked in every sense of the word, God would not display this miracle before them. They deserve from us mortals every tenderness and mercy."

The Bishop knew how to answer him, and said with a smile: "This much I can promise you, venerable priest: on the day you send me a flower from the Christmas garden in Göinge forest, I will send you a letter of pardon for all the outlaws you ask me to release."

At this the monk who worked in the garden understood that the Bishop did not believe the Robber Mother's story as he himself believed it. As for Father Hans, he was far indeed from any such thoughts; he thanked the Bishop for his promise, assuring him that he would send him the flower.

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