Home and wealth and honour he surrendered, and the love of a wife and of little prattlers on his knees; for none of these things were the portion of Christ.

No care he took as to how he should be sheltered by night or wherewith he should be clothed by day; and for meat and drink he looked to the hand of God, for these were to be the daily gift of His giving. So that when he heard the words of the sacred Gospel read in the little church of St. Mary of the Angels—"Provide neither gold nor silver nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves"—he went out and girt his coarse brown dress with a piece of cord, and cast away his shoes and went barefoot thenceforth.

Even to this day the brethren of the great Order of religious men which he founded are thus clothed, and girt with a cord, and shod with nakedness. And this Order is the Order of the Lesser Brethren, the Fratres Minores; and often they are called Franciscans, or the Friars of St. Francis.

But as to the thought he bestowed on his eating and drinking: once when he and Brother Masseo sat down on a broad stone near a fresh fountain to eat the bread which they had begged in the town, St. Francis rejoiced in their prosperity, saying, "Not only are we filled with plenty, but our treasure is of God's own providing; for consider this bread which has come to us like manna, and this noble table of stone fit for the feasting of kings, and this well of bright water which is beverage from heaven;" and he besought God to fill their hearts with an ardent love of the affluence of holy poverty.



Even the quiet and blessed peace of the cloister and the hermitage he denied himself; for he remembered that though the Lord Christ withdrew into the hills and went into the wilderness to refresh His soul with prayer and communion with His Heavenly Father, it was among the sons of men that He had His dwelling all His days. So he, too, the Little Bedesman, often tasted great happiness among the rocks and trees of solitary places; and his spirit felt the spell of the lonely hills; and he loved to pray in the woods, and in their shadow he was consoled by the visits of Angels, and was lifted bodily from the earth in ecstasies of joy. But the work which he had set his hands to do was among men, and in villages and the busy streets of cities.

It was not in the first place to save their own souls and to attain to holiness that he and his companions abandoned the common way of life. Long afterwards, when thousands of men had joined his Order of the Lesser Brethren, he said: "God has gathered us into this holy Order for the salvation of the world, and between us and the world He has made this compact, that we shall give the world a good example, and the world shall make provision for our necessities."

Yet, though he preached repentance and sorrow for sin, never was it his wish that men and women who had other duties should abandon those duties and their calling to follow his example. Besides the Order of the Lesser Brethren, he had founded an Order of holy women who should pray and praise while the men went forth to teach; but well he knew that all could not do as these had done, that the work of the world must be carried on, the fields ploughed and reaped, and the vines dressed, and the nets cast and drawn, and ships manned at sea, and markets filled, and children reared, and aged people nourished, and the dead laid in their graves; and when people were deeply moved by his preaching and would fain have followed him, he would say: "Nay, be in no unwise haste to leave your homes; there, too, you may serve God and be devout and holy;" and, promising them a rule of life, he founded the Third Order, into which, whatever their age or calling, all who desired to be true followers of Christ Jesus might be admitted.

Even among those who gave themselves up wholly to the life spiritual he discouraged excessive austerity, forbidding them to fast excessively or to wear shirts of mail and bands of iron on their flesh, for these not only injured their health and lessened their usefulness, but hindered them in prayer and meditation and delight in the love of God. Once, too, when it was revealed to him that a brother lay sleepless because of his weakness and the pinch of hunger, St. Francis rose, and, taking some bread with him, went to the brother's cell, and begged of him that they might eat that frugal fare together. God gave us these bodies of ours, not that we might torture them unwisely, but that we might use their strength and comeliness in His service.

So, with little heed to his own comfort, but full of consideration and gentleness for the weakness of others, he and his companions with him went about, preaching and praising God; cheering and helping the reapers and vintagers in the harvest time, and working with the field-folk in the earlier season; supping and praying with them afterwards; sleeping, when day failed, in barns or church porches or leper-hospitals, or may be in an old Etruscan tomb or in the shelter of a jutting rock, if no better chance befell; till at last they came to be known and beloved in every village and feudal castle and walled town among the hills between Rome and Florence. At first, indeed, they were mocked and derided and rudely treated, but in a little while it was seen that they were no self-seekers crazed with vanity, but messengers of heaven, and pure and great-hearted champions of Christ and His poor.

In those days of luxury and rapacity and of wild passions and ruthless bloodshed, it was strange to see these men stripping themselves of wealth and power—for many of the brethren had been rich and noble—and proclaiming the Gospel of the love and gentleness and purity and poverty of Christ. For not only were the brethren under vow to possess nothing whatever in the world, and not only were they forbidden to touch money on any account, but the Order itself was bound to poverty. It could not own great estates or noble abbeys and convents, but was as much dependent on charity and God's providing as the humblest of its friars.

Was it a wonderful thing that a great affection grew up in the hearts of the people for these preachers of the Cross, and especially for the most sweet and tender of them all, the Little Bedesman of Christ, with the delicate and kindly face worn by fasting, the black eyes, and the soft and sonorous voice? Greatly the common people loved our Lord, and gladly they listened to Him; and of all men who have lived St. Francis was most like our Lord in the grace and virtue of His humanity. I do not think that ever at any time did he say or do anything till he had first asked himself, What would my Lord have done or said?

And certain it seems to me that he must have thought of the Thief in Paradise and of the divine words Christ spoke to him on the cross, when Brother Angelo, the guardian of a hermitage among the mountains, told him how three notorious robbers had come begging; "but I," said the Brother, "quickly drove them away with harsh and bitter words." "Then sorely hast thou sinned against charity," replied the Saint in a stern voice, "and ill hast thou obeyed the holy Gospel of Christ, who wins back sinners by gentleness, and not by cruel reproofs. Go now, and take with thee this wallet of bread and this little flask of wine which I have begged, and get thee over hill and valley till thou hast found these men; and when thou comest up with them, give them the bread and the wine as my gift to them, and beg pardon on thy knees for thy fault, and tell them that I beseech them no longer to do wrong, but to fear and love God; and if this they will do, I will provide for them so that all their days they shall not lack food and drink." Then Brother Angelo did as he was bidden, and the robbers returned with him and became God's bedesmen and died in His service.

Not to men alone but to all living things on earth and air and water was St. Francis most gracious and loving. They were all his little brothers and sisters, and he forgot them not, still less scorned or slighted them, but spoke to them often and blessed them, and in return they showed him great love and sought to be of his fellowship. He bade his companions keep plots of ground for their little sisters the flowers, and to these lovely and speechless creatures he spoke, with no great fear that they would not understand his words. And all this was a marvellous thing in a cruel time, when human life was accounted of slight worth by fierce barons and ruffling marauders.

For the bees he set honey and wine in the winter, lest they should feel the nip of the cold too keenly; and bread for the birds, that they all, but especially "my brother Lark," should have joy of Christmastide, and at Rieti a brood of redbreasts were the guests of the house and raided the tables while the brethren were at meals; and when a youth gave St. Francis the turtle-doves he had snared, the Saint had nests made for them, and there they laid their eggs and hatched them, and fed from the hands of the brethren.

Out of affection a fisherman once gave him a great tench, but he put it back into the clear water of the lake, bidding it love God; and the fish played about the boat till St. Francis blessed it and bade it go.

"Why dost thou torment my little brothers the Lambs," he asked of a shepherd, "carrying them bound thus and hanging from a staff, so that they cry piteously?" And in exchange for the lambs he gave the shepherd his cloak. And at another time seeing amid a flock of goats one white lamb feeding, he was concerned that he had nothing but his brown robe to offer for it (for it reminded him of our Lord among the Pharisees); but a merchant came up and paid for it and gave it him, and he took it with him to the city and preached about it so that the hearts of those hearing him were melted. Afterwards the lamb was left in the care of a convent of holy women, and to the Saint's great delight, these wove him a gown of the lamb's innocent wool.

Fain would I tell of the coneys that took refuge in the folds of his habit, and of the swifts which flew screaming in their glee while he was preaching; but now it is time to speak of the sermon which he preached to a great multitude of birds in a field by the roadside, when he was on his way to Bevagno. Down from the trees flew the birds to hear him, and they nestled in the grassy bosom of the field, and listened till he had done. And these were the words he spoke to them:

"Little birds, little sisters mine, much are you holden to God your Creator; and at all times and in every place you ought to praise Him. Freedom he has given you to fly everywhere; and raiment He has given you, double and threefold. More than this, He preserved your kind in the Ark, so that your race might not come to an end. Still more do you owe him for the element of air, which he has made your portion. Over and above, you sow not, neither do you reap; but God feeds you, and gives you streams and springs for your thirst; the mountains He gives you, and the valleys for your refuge, and the tall trees wherein to build your nests. And because you cannot sew or spin, God takes thought to clothe you, you and your little ones. It must be, then, that your Creator loves you much, since He has granted you so many benefits. Be on your guard then against the sin of ingratitude, and strive always to give God praise."

And when the Saint ceased speaking, the birds made such signs as they might, by spreading their wings and opening their beaks, to show their love and pleasure; and when he had blessed them with the sign of the cross, they sprang up, and singing songs of unspeakable sweetness, away they streamed in a great cross to the four quarters of heaven.

One more story I must tell of the Saint and the wild creatures.

On a time when St. Francis was dwelling in the town of Agobio, there appeared in that countryside a monstrous grey wolf, which was so savage a man-eater that the people were afraid to go abroad, even when well armed. A pity it was to see folk in such fear and danger; wherefore the Saint, putting his whole trust in God, went out with his companions so far as they dared go, and thence onward all alone to the place where the wolf lay.

The wild beast rushed out at him from his lair with open mouth, but St. Francis waited and made over him the sign of the most holy cross, and called him to him, saying, "Come hither, Brother Wolf! In the name of Christ I bid you do no harm, neither to me nor to any one." And when the wolf closed his jaws and stopped running, and came at the Saint's bidding, as gentle as a lamb, and lay down at his feet, St. Francis rebuked him for the slaying of God's creatures, the beasts, and even men made in God's image. "But fain would I make peace," he said, "between you and these townsfolk; so that if you pledge them your faith that you will do no more scathe either to man or beast, they will forgive you all your offences in the past, and neither men nor dogs shall harry you any more. And I will look to it that you shall always have food as long as you abide with the folk of this countryside."

Whereupon Brother Wolf, by movements of body and tail and bowing of head, gave token of his good will to abide by that bargain. And in sign that he plighted his troth to it he gave the Saint his paw, and followed to the market-place of Agobio, where St. Francis repeated all that he had said, and the people agreed to the bargain, and once more the wolf gave pledge of his faith by putting his paw in the Saint's hand.

For two years thereafter Brother Wolf dwelt in Agobio, going tame and gentle from house to house and in and out at will, doing hurt to none, but much loved of the children and cared for in food and drink and kindness by the townsfolk, so that no one lifted stone or stick against him, neither did any dog bark at him. At the end of those years he died of old age, and the people were grieved that no more should they see his gentle coming and going.

Such was the courtesy and sweet fellowship of St. Francis with the wild creatures.

It remains yet to say of him that he was ever gay and joyous as became God's gleeman. Greatly he loved the song of bird and man, and all melody and minstrelsy. Nor was it ill-pleasing to God that he should rejoice in these good gifts, for once lying in his cell faint with fever, to him came the thought that the sound of music might ease his pain; but when the friar whom he asked to play for him was afraid of causing a scandal by his playing, St. Francis, left alone, heard such music that his suffering ceased and his fever left him. And as he lay listening he was aware that the sound kept coming and going; and how could it have been otherwise? for it was the lute-playing of an Angel, far away, walking in Paradise.

Sweet new songs he made in the language of the common people, folk of field and mountain, muleteers and vine-dressers, woodmen and hunters, so that they in turn might be light of heart amid their toil and sorrow. One great hymn he composed, and of that I will speak later; but indeed all his sayings and sermons were a sort of divine song, and when he sent his companions from one village to another he bade them say: "We are God's gleemen. For song and sermon we ask largesse, and our largesse shall be that you persevere in sorrow for your sins."

Seeing that ladies of the world, great and beautiful, took pleasure in the songs of the troubadours sung at twilight under their windows, he charged all the churches of his Order that at fall of day the bells should be rung to recall the greeting with which Gabriel the Angel saluted the Virgin Mother of the Lord: "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou among women." And from that day to this the bells have rung out the Angelus at sunset, and now there is no land under heaven wherein those bells are not heard and wherein devout men hearing them do not pause to repeat that greeting angelic.

In like fashion it was great delight to him (the Pope having given him leave) to make in the churches of the Order a representation of the Crib of Bethlehem on the feast of the Nativity. Of these the first was made at the hermitage of Greccio. Thither the peasants flocked on Christmas Eve, with lanterns and torches, making the forest ring with their carols; and there in the church they found a stable with straw, and an ox and an ass tethered to the manger; and St. Francis spoke to the folk about Bethlehem and the Shepherds in the field, and the birth of the divine Babe, so that all who heard him wept happy tears of compassion and thankfulness.

And as St. Francis stood sighing for joy and gazing at the empty manger, behold! a wondrous thing happened. For the knight Giovanni, who had given the ox and the ass and the stable, saw that on the straw in the manger there lay a beautiful child, which awoke from slumber, as it seemed, and stretched out its little hands to St. Francis as he leaned over it.

Even to this day there is no land in which you may not see, on Christmas Eve, the Crib of Bethlehem; but in those old days of St. Francis many souls were saved by the sight of that lowly manger from the sin of those heretics who denied that the Word was made flesh and that the Son of God was born as a little child for our salvation.

The joy and gaiety of St. Francis were of two kinds. There was the joy of love, and there was the joy of suffering for love. And of this last he spoke a wonderful rhapsody as he journeyed once with Brother Leo, in the grievous cold of the early spring, from Perugia to St. Mary of the Angels. For, as Brother Leo was walking on before, St. Francis called aloud to him:—

"O Brother Leo, although throughout the world the Lesser Brethren were mirrors of holiness and edification, nevertheless write it down, and give good heed to it, that not therein is perfect joy."

And again, a little further on, he called aloud:

"O Brother Leo, though the Lesser Brother should give the blind sight, and make the misshapen straight, and cast out devils, and give hearing to the deaf, and make the lame to walk and the dumb to speak; yea, should he even raise the four days' dead to life, write it down that not herein is perfect joy."

And yet a little further on he cried out:

"O Brother Leo, if the Lesser Brother should know all languages, and every science, and all the Scriptures, so that he could foretell not solely the hidden things of the future but also the secrets of the heart, write down that not therein is perfect joy."

A little further yet, and once again he cried aloud:

"O Brother Leo, God's little sheep, though the Lesser Brother were to speak with the tongue of the Angels, and know the courses of the stars and the virtues of herbs, and though the treasures of the earth were discovered to him, and he had craft and knowledge of birds and fishes and of all living creatures, and of men, and of trees and stones, and roots and waters, write it down that not therein is perfect joy."

And once more, having gone a little further, St. Francis called aloud:

"O Brother Leo, even though the Lesser Brother could by his preaching convert all the unbelievers to the faith of Christ, write down that not therein is perfect joy."

And when, after St. Francis had spoken in this manner for the space of two miles, Brother Leo besought him to reveal wherein might perfect joy be found, St. Francis answered him:

"When we are come, drenched with rain and benumbed with cold and bespattered with mud and aching with hunger, to St. Mary of the Angels, and knock at the door, and the porter asks wrathfully, 'Who are you?' and on our answering, 'Two of your brethren are we,' 'Two gangrel rogues,' says he, 'who go about cheating the world and sorning the alms of the poor; away with you!' and whips the door to, leaving us till nightfall, cold and famished, in the snow and rain; if with patience we bear this injury and harshness and rejection, nowise ruined in our mind and making no murmur of complaint, but considering within ourselves, humbly and in charity, that the porter knows well who we are, and that God sets him up to speak against us—O Brother Leo, write down that therein is perfect joy."

And perfect joy, he added, if, knocking a second time, they brought the porter out upon them, fuming, and bidding them betake themselves to the alms-house, for knaves and thieves, and nevertheless they bore all with patience and with gladness and love. And yet again, he continued, if a third time they knocked and shouted to him, for pity of their hunger and cold and the misery of the night, to let them in, and he came, fierce with rage, crying, "Ah, bold and sturdy vagabonds, now I will pay you," and caught them by the hood, and hurled them into the snow, and belaboured them with a knotty cudgel; and if still, in despite of all pain and contumely, they endured with gladness, thinking of the pains of the blessed Lord Christ, which for love of Him they too should be willing to bear—then might it be truly written down that therein was perfect joy.

This was the perfect joy of the Saint most like to Christ of all the Saints that the world has seen. And of all joys this was the most perfect, seeing that it was by the patient way of tears and tribulation, of bodily pain and anguish of spirit, of humiliation and rejection, that a man might come most nearly to a likeness of Christ.

Through all his gaiety and gladness and benignity he carried in his heart one sorrow, and that was the memory of the Passion of our Lord. Once he was found weeping in the country, and when he was asked whether he was in grievous pain that he wept, "Ah!" he replied, "it is for the Passion of my Lord Jesus that I weep; and for that I should think little shame to go weeping through the whole world."

Two years before his death there befell him that miraculous transfiguration, which, so far as it may be with a sinful son of Adam, made perfect the resemblance between him and the Saviour crucified. And it was after this manner.

In the upper valley of the Arno stream there towers above the pines and giant beeches of the hills a great basalt rock, Alvernia, which looks over Italy, east and west, to the two seas. That rock is accessible by but a single foot-track, and it is gashed and riven by grim chasms, yet withal great oaks and beech-trees flourish atop among the boulders, and there are drifts of fragrant wild flowers, and legions of birds and other wild creatures dwell there; and the lights and colours of heaven play about the rock, and the winds of heaven visit it with wholesome air.

Now a great and wealthy gentleman of Tuscany, Orlando of Chiusi, gave St. Francis that mountain for a hermitage where he could be remote from men, and thither, with three of the brethren most dear to him, the Saint went to spend the forty days of the Fast of St. Michael the Archangel.

Two nights they slept on the way, but on the third day, so worn was St. Francis with fatigue and illness, that his companions were fain to beg a poor peasant to lend them his ass. As they proceeded on their journey the peasant, walking behind the ass, said to St. Francis, "Tell me now, art thou Brother Francis of Assisi?" and when St. Francis said he was, the peasant rejoined, "Look to it, then, that thou strive to be as good as folk take thee to be, so that those who have faith in thee be not disappointed in what they expect to find in thee." And instantly St. Francis got down from the ass, and, kneeling on the ground, kissed the peasant's feet, and thanked him for his brotherly admonition.

So onward they journeyed up the mountain till they came to the foot of Alvernia, and there as St. Francis rested him under an oak, vast flights of birds came fluttering and blithely singing, and alighted on his shoulders and arms, and on his lap, and about his feet. "Not ill-pleased is our Lord, I think," said he, "that we have come to dwell on this mountain, seeing what glee our little brothers and sisters the Birds show at our coming."

Under a fair beech on the top of the rock the brethren built him a cell of branches, and he lived alone in prayer, apart from the others, for the foreknowledge of his death had overshadowed him. Once as he stood by the cell, scanning the shape of the mountain and musing on the clefts and chasms in the huge rocks, it was borne in upon him that the mountain had been thus torn and cloven in the Ninth Hour when our Lord cried with a loud voice, and the rocks were rent. And beside this beech-tree St. Francis was many times uplifted into the air in rapture, and many times Angels came to him, and walked with him for his consolation.

A while later, the brethren laid a tree across a chasm, and St. Francis hid himself in a more lonely place, where no one might hear him when he cried out; and a falcon, which had its nest hard by his cell, woke him for matins, and according as he was more weary or sickly at one time than another, that feathered brother, having compassion on him, woke him later or sooner, and all the long day was at hand to give him companionship.

Here in this wild place, in September, on Holy Cross Day, early in the morning, before the dawn whitened, St. Francis knelt with his face turned to the dark east; and praying long and with great fervour, he besought the Lord Christ Jesus for two graces before he died. And the first was this, that, so far as mortal flesh might bear it, he might feel in his body the torture which our Lord suffered in His Passion; and the second, that he might feel in his heart the exceeding great love for which He was willing to bear such torture.

Now even while he was praying in this wise a mighty six-winged Seraph, burning with light unspeakable, came flying towards him; and St. Francis saw that the Seraph bore within himself the figure of a cross, and thereon the image of a man crucified. Two of the six wings of the Seraph were lifted up over the head of the crucified; and two were spread for flying; and two veiled the whole of the body on the cross.

Then as the Seraph drew nigh, the eyes of Christ the crucified looked into the eyes of St. Francis, piercing and sweet and terrible; and St. Francis could scarce endure the rapture and the agony with which that look consumed him, and transfigured him, and burned into his body the similitude of Christ's Passion. For straightway his hands and his feet were pierced through and through with nails; and the heads of the nails were round and black, and the points were bent backward and riveted on the further side of hand and foot; and his right side was opened with the deep thrust of the spear; and the gash was red and blood came dropping from it. Terrible to bear was the ache of those wounds; and for the nails in his feet St. Francis scarce could stand and could not walk at all.

Such was the transfiguration of the Little Bedesman of Christ into His visible semblance on the holy rock Alvernia.

For two years he sustained the ecstasy and anguish of that likeness, but of his sayings and of the wonders he wrought in that time I will not speak.

In those days he composed the Song of the Sun, and oftentimes sang it, and in many a village and market-place was it sung by the brethren going two by two in their labour for souls. A mighty hymn of praise to the Lord God most high and omnipotent was this Song of the Sun; for in this manner it was that St. Francis sang:

"Praised be Thou, my Lord; by all Thy creatures praised; and chiefly praised by Brother Sun who gives us light of day.

"Through him Thou shinest; fair is he, brilliant with glittering fire; and he through heaven bears, Most High, symbol and sense of thee.

"Praised by Sister Moon be Thou; and praised by all the Stars. These hast Thou made, and Thou hast made them precious and beautiful and bright.

"Praised by Brother Wind be Thou; by Air, and Cloud that lives in air, and all the Weathers of the world, whereby their keep Thou dost provide for all the creatures Thou hast made.

"Praised by Sister Water, Lord, be Thou; the lowly water, precious, pure, the gracious handmaiden.

"Praised by Brother Fire, by whom Thou makest light for us i' the dark; and fair is he and jocund, sturdy and strong.

"Praised by our Sister Mother-Earth, which keeps us and sustains, and gives forth plenteous fruit, and grass, and coloured flowers.

"Praised be Thou, Lord my God, by those who for Thy love forgive, and for Thy love endure; blessed in their patience they; by Thee shall they be crowned."

As he drew nigh to his end at St. Mary of the Angels, he cried out, "Welcome, Sister Death!" and when his brethren, as he had bidden them, sang once more the Song of the Sun, he added another verse:

"Praised by our Sister Death be Thou—that bodily death which no man may escape. Alas for those who die in mortal sin, but happy they conforming to Thy will; for these the second death shall nowise hurt."

In the tenth month, on the fourth day of the month, in the forty-and-fifth year of his age, having recited the Psalm, "I cried unto Thee, O Lord, and said: Thou art my hope and my portion in the land of the living," St. Francis died very joyfully. At the fall of the night he died, and while still the brethren were gazing upon his face there dropped down on the thatch of the cell in which he lay larks innumerable, and most sweetly they sang, as though they rejoiced at the release of their holy kinsman.

He was buried at the great church at Assisi; but though it is thought he lies beneath the high altar, the spot is unknown to any man, and the hill-folk say that St. Francis is not dead at all, but that he lives hidden in a secret crypt far down below the roots of wall and pillar. Standing there, pale and upright, with the blood red in the five wounds of his crucifixion, he waits in a heavenly trance for the sound of the last trumpet, when the nations of the earth shall see in the clouds Him whom they have pierced.

Long after his death it was the custom of the brethren of a certain house of his Order to go chanting in procession at midnight once in the year to his resting-place. But the way was long and dark; the weather often bleak and stormy. Little by little devotion cooled, and the friars fell away, till there remained but one old monk willing to go on this pilgrimage. As he went into the dark and the storm, the road among the woods and rocks grew luminous, and in place of the cross and torches and canticles of the former days, great flocks of birds escorted him on his way, singing and keeping him company. The little feathered brothers and sisters had not abated in their love of the Little Bedesman who had caressed and blessed them.



The Burning of Abbot Spiridion

Many wonderful things are told of the Abbot Spiridion, who lived a hundred years and four and yet grew never old; neither was the brightness of his eyes dimmed nor his hair silvered, nor was his frame bowed and palsied with the weakness of age.

During the long years in which he ruled the abbey he had founded, he seemed to live less in this world than in the communion of the blessed souls of men redeemed. The whole earth was as clear to him as though it had been of crystal, and when he raised his eyes he saw not solely what other men saw, but the vision of all that is under the heavens. And this vision of life was at once his trial and his consolation. For it was an unspeakable sorrow and anguish to see on all sides the sin and suffering and misery of creation, and often he wept bitterly when no one dared ask him the reason of his affliction. Yet oftentimes, on the other hand, he laughed for lightness of spirit, and bade the brethren rejoice because of the salvation of some reprobate soul, or the relief of one oppressed, or the bestowal of some blessing on the servants of God.

When it happened that a brother had been sent on a journey and was long absent, and the community was talking of him, wondering how he had fared and where he might now be, the Abbot would sometimes break silence and say: "I see our brother resting in such or such a cell," or "Our brother is even now singing a psalm as he drifts in his small boat of skins down this or that river," or, perchance, "Our brother is coming over the hill and in an hour he will be with us."

In the abbey there was a certain lay-brother, dull and slow of wit, with a hindrance in his speech; and one of the monks despised him and scoffed at his defect of nature. This lay-brother had the care of the garden of pot-herbs and fruit-trees, and as he was toiling there one day the Abbot called the uncharitable monk to him, and said: "Come, let us see what our brother the Fool is doing."

The monk trembled when he heard those words, for he knew that his scornfulness had been discovered, and he followed the Abbot in great confusion. In the garden they found the lay-brother planting cabbages.

"Is our brother the Fool alone?" asked the Abbot.

"Our brother is alone, father," replied the monk.

Then the Abbot touched the monk's eyes, and straightway he saw that the lay-brother was not alone: beside him were two radiant child-angels, one of whom held for him a basket containing the young plants, and the second walked to and fro playing on a lute to lighten his labour. Then, overwhelmed with shame, the monk fell on his knees, confessing his sin and promising amendment.

More strange than this is the story I have now to tell. It happened through mischance that fire broke out in the abbey, and the flames were spreading so fiercely from one wattled cell to another that there was great danger of the whole monastery being destroyed. With piteous cries the religious surrounded the Abbot, and besought him to intercede with God that their home might be spared.

Spiridion gently shook his head. "The mercy of God," he replied, "has given it to another to intercede for us in our danger this day. The holy Pontiff, Gregory, has looked out of Rome and seen us in our trouble. At this moment he is kneeling in prayer for us, and his supplication on our behalf will avail."

Even while Spiridion was speaking, the Pope, far away in the Golden City, beheld the flames rising from the abbey, and called his household to join him in entreating heaven; and at once it was seen that the flames were being beaten to the ground and extinguished as though invisible hands were beating them down with invisible branches of trees.

Now when the brethren were made aware that the whole earth was being constantly shown thus in vision to the Abbot, they stood in sad dread of him; even the most pure and lowly-hearted were abashed at this thought that perchance every act and every vain fancy of theirs was laid bare to his knowledge. So it came to pass that out of shame and fear their hearts were little by little estranged from him.

The Abbot was not slow to perceive the change, and he spoke of it when they met in chapter.

"Truly it is a grievous and a terrible thing," he said, "that any man should see with the eyes of the soul more than it is given the eye of flesh to see; and I pray you, brethren, beseech the Lord, if it be His will, that the vision be withdrawn from me. But if His will it be not, beseech Him that I may not sin through seeing. So much for myself, but as for you, dear children, why are you grieved? Because it may be that I see you when you think no man sees you? Am I then the only one who sees you? Is there not at least one other—even the high God, from whom the hidden man of the heart is nowise hidden? If you fear His holy eyes, little need you fear the eyes of any sinful man."

Such a one was the Abbot Spiridion. His spirit passed from among men in the hundred and fifth year of his exile, in the third month of the year, on the morning of the resurrection of the Lord Christ, between the white and the red of the morning, when the brethren were singing prime. As he listened to them singing, his cheeks suddenly became flushed with bright colour, and those who were about him, thinking he was in pain, asked if in any way they might relieve him; but he replied in a low voice, "When the heart is glad the face flowers." In a little after that he laughed softly to himself, and so they knew that his end was gladness.

When he died there were three hundred religious in that monastery, and in his stead Samson was made Abbot of Gracedieu.

The body of Spiridion was laid in a stone coffin hard by the abbey church, and to those who had known the holy man it seemed nothing strange that the sick and afflicted should come and kneel by his grave, in the hope that by his intercession they might obtain succour in their misery. Certain it is that the blind were restored to sight, and the sick to health, and the painful to great ease; and the fame of these miracles was noised abroad in the world till thousands came in pilgrimage to the spot, and costly gifts—gold and silver and jewels, sheep and cattle, wine and corn, and even charters of large demesnes, fruitful fields and woods and waters—were bestowed as thank-offerings to the saintly man.

Then over his tomb rose a vast and beautiful minster, and the tomb itself was covered with a shrine, brilliant with blue and vermilion and gold and sculptured flowers, and guarded by angels with outspreading wings.

At the beginning Abbot Samson was well pleased, for the great church rose like a dream of heaven, but when he perceived that the constant concourse of people was destroying the hushed contemplation and piety of the house, and that the brethren were distracted with eagerness for gain and luxury and the pride of life, he resolved to make an end. Wherefore after High Mass on the Feast of All Saints he bade the religious walk in procession to the splendid shrine, and there the Abbot, with the shepherd's staff of rule in his hand, struck thrice on the stone coffin, and three times he called aloud: "Spiridion! Spiridion! Spiridion!" and begged him, as he had been founder and first father of that monastery, to listen to the grievance which had befallen them in consequence of the miracles he had wrought from his grave.

And after an indignant recital of their loss of humility, of their lukewarmness, of their desire for excitement and the pageants of the world, of their lust for buildings of stone and pillared walks and plentiful living, he concluded: "Make, then, we beseech thee, no sign from thy sepulchre. Let life and death, and joy and sorrow, and blindness and disease, and all the vicissitudes of this world follow their natural courses. Do not thou, out of compassion for thy fellow-man, interpose in the lawful succession of things. This is what we ask of thee, expecting it of thy love. But if it be that thou deny us, solemnly we declare unto thee, by the obedience which once we owed thee, we shall unearth thy bones and cast them forth from amongst us."

Now whether it was that for some high purpose God delayed the answer to that prayer, or whether it was the folly and superstition of men which gave to things natural the likeness of the miraculous, and even peradventure the folk lied out of a mistaken zeal for the glory of the saints, there was no abatement of the wonders wrought at Spiridion's tomb; and when the Abbot would have forbidden access to the vast crowds of pilgrims, the people resisted with angry violence and threatened fire and bloodshed.

So Samson summoned the wisest and holiest of the brotherhood, and took them into counsel.

"This thing," said he, "cannot be of God, that one of His saints, the founder of this house, should lead into sloth and luxury the children of the house he has founded. Sooner could I believe that this is a malignant snare of the most Evil One, who heals the bodily ailments of a few that he may wreck the immortal souls of many."

Then arose Dom Walaric, the most aged of the monks, and said: "Already, Father Abbot, hast thou spoken judgment. Grievously shall I lament what must be done; but in one way only can we root out this corruption. Let the bones of the holy man be unearthed and cast forth. He in the high heavens will know that we do not use him despitefully, but that of two evils this, indeed, is scarcely to be spoken of as an evil."

Wherefore, in a grassy bay of the land by the river a great pile of faggots was reared, dry and quick for the touch of flame. And the Abbot broke down the shrine and opened the tomb.

When the stone lid of the coffin had been lifted, the religious saw that, though it had been long buried, the body showed no sign of decay. Fresh and uncorrupted it lay in the sacred vestments; youthful and comely of face, despite a marvellous old age and years of sepulture.

With many tears they raised what seemed rather a sleeping man than a dead, and bore him to the river; and when they had heaped the faggots about him, the Abbot blessed the body and the fuel, and with his own hand set fire to the funeral pile.

The brethren restrained not their weeping and lamentation as they witnessed that hallowed burning; and the Abbot, with heavy eyes, tarried till the last ember had died out. Then were all the ashes of the fire swept together and cast into the fleeting river, which bore them through lands remote into the utmost sea that hath no outland limit save the blue sky and the low light of the shifting stars.



The Countess Itha

In the days of King Coeur-de-Lion the good Count Hartmann ruled in Kirchberg in the happy Swabian land. And never had that fair land been happier than it was in those days, for the Count was a devout Christian, a lover of peace in the midst of warlike and rapacious barons, and a ruler just and merciful to his vassals. Among the green and pleasant hills on his domain he had founded a monastery for the monks of St. Benedict, and thither he often rode with his daughter Itha, the delight of his heart and the light of the grim old castle of the Kirchberg; so that, seeing the piety of her father, she grew up in the love and fear of God, and from her gentle mother she learned to feel a deep compassion for the poor and afflicted.

No sweeter maid than she, with her blue eyes and light brown hair, was there in all that land of sturdy men and nut-brown maidens. The people loved the very earth she stood on. In their days of trouble and sorrow she was their morning and their evening star, and they never wearied of praising her goodness and her beauty.

When Itha was in the bloom of her girlhood it befell that the young Count Heinrich of the Toggenburg, journeying homeward from the famous tournament at Cologne, heard of this peerless flower of Swabia, and turned aside to the Castle of Kirchberg to see if perchance he might win a good and lovely wife. He was made welcome, and no sooner had he looked on Itha's fair and loving face, and marked with what modesty and courtesy she bore herself, than he heard joy-bells ringing in his heart, and said, "Now, by the blessed cross, here is the pearl of price for me!" Promptly he wooed her with tender words, and with eyes that spoke more than tongue could find words for, and passionate observance, and all that renders a man pleasing to a maid.

And Itha was not loth to be won, for the Count was young and handsome, tall and strong, and famous for feats of arms, and a mighty lord—master of the rich straths and valleys of the Thur River, and of many a burgh and district in the mountains beyond; and yet, despite all this, he, so noble and beautiful, loved her, even her, the little Swabian maid who had never deemed herself likely to come to such honour and happiness. Nor were the kindly father and mother ill-pleased that so goodly a man and so mighty a lord should have their dear child.

So in a little while the Count put on Itha's hand the ring of betrothal, and Itha, smiling and blushing, raised it to her lips and kissed it. "Blissful ring!" said the Count jestingly; "and yet, dearest heart, you do well to cherish it, for it is an enchanted ring, an old ring of which there are many strange stories." Even while he was speaking Itha's heart misgave her, and she was aware of a feeling of doubt and foreboding; but she looked at the ring and saw how massive was the gold and how curiously wrought and set with rare gems, and its brilliancy and beauty beguiled her of her foreboding, and she asked no questions of the stories told of it or of the nature of its enchantment.

Quickly on the betrothal followed the marriage and the leave-taking. With tears in her eyes Itha rode away with her lord, looking back often to the old castle and gazing farewell on the pleasant land and the fields and villages she should not see again for, it might be, many long years. But by her side rode the Count, ever gay and tender, and he comforted her in her sadness, and lightened the way with loving converse, till she put from her all her regret and longing, and made herself happy in their love.



So they journeyed through the rocks and wildwood of the Schwartzwald, and came in view of the blue waters of the lake of Constance glittering in the sun, and saw the vast mountain region beyond with its pine forests, and above the forests the long blue mists on the high pastures, and far over all, hanging like silvery summer clouds in the blue heavens, the shining peaks of the snowy Alps. And here, at last, they were winding down the fruitful valley of the Thur, and yonder, perched on a rugged bluff, rose the stern walls of Castle Toggenburg, with banners flying from the turrets, and the rocky roadway strewn with flowers, and vassals and retainers crowding to welcome home the bride.

Now, for all his tenderness and gaiety and sweetness in wooing, the Count Heinrich was a hasty and fiery man, quickly stirred to anger and blind rage, and in his storms of passion he was violent and cruel. Not long after their home-coming—woe worth the while!—he flashed out ever and anon in his hot blood at little things which ruffled his temper, and spoke harsh words which his gentle wife found hard to bear, and which in his better moments he sincerely repented. Very willingly she forgave him, but though at first he would kiss and caress her, afterwards her very forgiveness and her meekness chafed and galled his proud spirit, so that the first magical freshness of love faded from their life, even as the dew dries on the flower in the heat of the morning.

Not far from the castle, in a clearing in the woods, nestled the little convent and chapel of Our Lady in the Meadow, and thither, attended by one of her pages, the Countess Itha went daily to pray for her husband, that he might conquer the violence of his wild heart, and for herself, that she might not grow to fear him more than she loved him. In these days of her trial, and in the worse days to come, a great consolation it was to her to kneel in the silent chapel and pour out her unhappiness to her whose heart had been pierced by seven swords of sorrow.

Time went by, and when no little angel came from the knees of God to lighten her burden and to restrain with its small hands the headlong passion of her husband, the Count was filled with bitterness of spirit as he looked forward to a childless old age, and reflected that all the fruitful straths of the Toggenburg, and the valleys and townships, would pass away to some kinsman, and no son of his would there be to prolong the memory of his name and greatness. When this gloomy dread had taken possession of him, he would turn savagely on the Countess in his fits of fury, and cry aloud: "Out of my sight! For all thy meekness and thy praying and thy almsgiving, God knows it was an ill day when I set eyes on that fair face of thine!" Yet this was in no way his true thought, for in spite of his lower nature the Count loved her, but it is ever the curse of anger in a man that it shall wreak itself most despitefully on his nearest and best. And Itha, who had learned this in the school of long-suffering, answered never a word, but only prayed the more constantly and imploringly.

In the train of the Countess there were two pages, Dominic, an Italian, whom she misliked for his vanity and boldness, and Cuno, a comely Swabian lad, who had followed her from her father's house. Most frequently when she went to Our Lady in the Meadow she dismissed Dominic and bade Cuno attend her, for in her distress it was some crumb of comfort to see the face of a fellow-countryman, and to speak to him of Kirchberg and the dear land she had left. But Dominic, seeing that the Swabian was preferred, hated Cuno, and bore the lady scant goodwill, and in a little set his brain to some device by which he might vent his malice on both. This was no difficult task, for the Count was as prone to jealousy as he was quick to wrath, and with crafty hint and wily jest and seemingly aimless chatter the Italian sowed the seeds of suspicion and watchfulness in his master's mind.

Consider, then, if these were not days of heartbreak for this lady, still so young and so beautiful, so unlovingly entreated, and so far away from the home of her happy childhood. Yet she bore all patiently and without complaint or murmur, only at times when she looked from terrace or tower her gaze travelled beyond the deep pine-woods, and in a wistful day-dream she retraced, beyond the great lake and the Black Forest, all the long way she had ridden so joyfully with her dear husband by her side.

One day in the springtime, when the birds of passage had flown northward, carrying her tears and kisses with them, she bethought her of the rich apparel in which she had been wed, and took it from the carved oaken coffer to sweeten in the sun. Among her jewels she came upon her betrothal ring, and the glitter of it reminded her of what her lord had said of its enchantment and the strange stories told of it. "Are any of them so sad and strange as mine?" she wondered with tears in her eyes; then kissing the ring in memory of that first kiss she had given it, she laid it on a table in the window-bay, and busied herself with the bridal finery; and while she was so busied she was called away to some cares of her household, and left the chamber.

When she returned to put away her marriage treasures, the betrothal ring was missing. On the instant a cold fear came over her. In vain she searched the coffer and the chamber; in vain she endeavoured to persuade herself that she must have mislaid the jewel, or that perchance the Count had seen it, and partly in jest and partly in rebuke of her carelessness, had taken it. The ring had vanished, and in spite of herself she felt that its disappearance portended some terrible evil. Too fearful to arouse her husband's anger, she breathed no word of her loss, and trusted to time or oblivion for a remedy.

No great while after this, as the Swabian page was rambling in the wood near the convent, he heard a great outcry of ravens around a nest in an ancient fir-tree, and prompted partly by curiosity to know the cause of the disquiet, and partly by the wish to have a young raven for sport in the winter evenings, he climbed up to the nest. Looking into the great matted pack of twigs, heather and lamb's wool, he caught sight of a gold ring curiously chased and set with sparkling gems; and slipping it gleefully on his finger he descended the tree and went his way homeward to the castle.

A few days later when the Count by chance cast his eye on the jewel, he recognised it at a glance for the enchanted ring of many strange stories. The crafty lies of the Italian Dominic flashed upon him; and, never questioning that the Countess had given the ring to her favourite, he sprang upon Cuno as though he would strangle him. Then in a moment he flung him aside, and in a voice of thunder cried for the wildest steed in his stables to be brought forth. Paralysed with fright, the luckless page was seized and bound by the heels to the tail of the half-tame creature, which was led out beyond the drawbridge, and pricked with daggers till it flung off the men-at-arms and dashed screaming down the rocky ascent into the wildwood.

Stung to madness by his jealousy, the Count rushed to the apartment of the Countess. "False and faithless, false and faithless!" he cried in hoarse rage, and clutching her in his iron grasp, lifted her in the air and hurled her through the casement into the horrible abyss below.

As she fell Itha commended her soul to God. The world seemed to reel and swim around her; she felt as if that long lapse through space would never have an end, and then it appeared to her as though she were peacefully musing in her chair, and she saw the castle of Kirchberg and the pleasant fields lying serene in the sunlight, and the happy villages, each with its great crucifix beside its rustic church, and men and women at labour in the fields. How long that vision lasted she could not tell. Then as in her fall she was passing through the tops of the trees which climbed up the lower ledges of the castle rocks, green leafy hands caught her dress and held her a little, and strong arms closed about her, and yielded slowly till she touched the ground; and she knew that the touch of these was not the mere touch of senseless things, but a contact of sweetness and power which thrilled through her whole being.

Falling on her knees, she thanked God for her escape, and rising again she went into the forest, wondering whither she should betake herself and what she should do; for now she had no husband and no home. She left the beaten track, and plunging through the bracken, walked on till she was tired. Then she sat down on a boulder. Among the pines it was already dusk, and the air seemed filled with a grey mist, but this was caused by the innumerable dry wiry twigs which fringed the lower branches of the trees with webs of fine cordage; and when a ray of the setting sun struck through the pine trunks, it lit up the bracken with emerald and brightened the ruddy scales of the pine bark to red gold. Here it was dry and sheltered, with the thick carpet of pine-needles underfoot and the thick roof of branches overhead: and but for dread of wild creatures she thought she might well pass the night in this place. To-morrow she would wander further and learn how life might be sustained in the forest.

The last ray of sunshine died away; the deep woods began to blacken; a cool air sighed in the high tops of the trees. It was very homeless and lonely. She took heart, however, remembering God's goodness to her, and placing her confidence in His care.

Suddenly she perceived a glimmering of lights among the pines. Torches they seemed, a long way off; and she thought it must be the retainers of the Count, who, finding she had not been killed by her fall, had sent them out to seek for her. The lights drew nearer, and she sat very still, resigned to her fate whatsoever it might be. And yet nearer they came, till at length by their shining she saw a great stag with lordly antlers, and on the tines of the antlers glittered tongues of flame.

Slowly the beautiful creature came up to her and regarded her with his large soft brown eyes. Then he moved away a little and looked back, as though he were bidding her follow him. She rose and walked by his side, and he led her far through the forest, till they came to an overhanging rock beside a brook, and there he stopped.

In this hidden nook of the mountain-forest she made her home. With branches and stones and turf she walled in the open hollow of the rock. In marshy places she gathered the thick spongy mosses, yellow and red, and dried them in the sun for warmth at night in the cold weather. She lived on roots and berries, acorns and nuts and wild fruit, and these in their time of plenty she stored against the winter. Birds' eggs she found in the spring; in due season the hinds, with their young, came to her and gave her milk for many days; the wild bees provided her with honey. With slow and painful toil she wove the cotton-grass and the fibres of the bark of the birch, so that she should not lack for clothing.

In the warm summer months there was a great tranquillity and hushed joy in this hard life. A tender magic breathed in the colour and music of the forest, in its long pauses of windless day-dreaming, in its breezy frolic with the sunshine. The trees and boulders were kindly; and the turf reminded her of her mother's bosom. About her refuge the wild flowers grew in plenty—primrose and blue gentian, yellow cinquefoil and pink geranium, and forget-me-nots, and many more, and these looked up at her with the happy faces of little children who were innocent and knew no care; and over whole acres lay the bloom of the ling, and nothing more lovely grows on earthly hills. Through breaks in the woodland she saw afar the Alpine heights, and the bright visionary peaks of snow floating in the blue air like glimpses of heaven.

But it was a bitter life in the winter-tide, when the forest fretted and moaned, and snow drifted about the shelter, and the rocks were jagged with icicles, and the stones of the brook were glazed with cold, and the dark came soon and lasted long. She had no fire, but, by God's good providence, in this cruel season the great stag came to her at dusk, and couched in the hollow of the rock beside her, and the lights on his antlers lit up the poor house, and the glow of his body and his pleasant breath gave her warmth.

Here, then, dead to the world, dead to all she loved most dearly, Itha consecrated herself body and soul to God for the rest of her earthly years. If she suffered as the wild children of nature suffer, she was free at least from the cares and sorrows with which men embitter each other's existence. Here she would willingly live so long as God willed; here she would gladly surrender her soul when He was pleased to call it home.

The days of her exile were many. For seventeen years she dwelt thus in her hermitage in the forest, alone and forgotten.

Forgotten, did I say? Not wholly. The Count never forgot her. Stung by remorse (for in his heart of hearts he could not but believe her true and innocent), haunted by the recollection of the happiness he had flung from him, wifeless, childless, friendless, he could find no rest or forgetfulness except in the excitement and peril of the battle-field. But the slaughter of men and the glory of victory were as dust and ashes in his mouth. He had lost the joy of life, the pride of race, the exultation of power. For one look from those sweet eyes, over which, doubtless, the hands of some grateful peasant had laid the earth, he would have joyfully exchanged renown and lordship, and even life itself.

At length in the fulness of God's good time, it chanced that the Count was hunting in a distant part of the forest, when he started from its covert a splendid stag. Away through the open the beautiful creature seemed to float before him, and Heinrich followed in hot chase. Across grassy clearings and through dim vistas of pines, over brooks and among boulders and through close underwood, the fleet quarry led him without stop or stay, till at last it reached the hanging rock which was Itha's cell, and there it stood at bay; and alarmed by the clatter of hoofs, a tall pale woman, rudely clad in her poor forest garb, came to the entrance.

Surprised at so strange a sight, the Count drew rein and stared at the woman. Despite the lapse of time and her pallor and emaciation, in an instant he recognised the wife whom he believed dead, and she too recognised the husband she had loved.

How shall I tell of all that was said between those two by that lonely hermitage in the depth of the forest? As in the old days, she was eager to forgive everything; but it was in vain that the Count besought her to return to the life which she had forgotten for so many years. Long had she been dead and buried, so far as earthly things were concerned. She would prefer, despite the hardness and the pain, to spend in this peaceful spot what time was yet allotted to her, but that she longed once more to hear the music of the holy bells, to kneel once more before the altar of God.

What plea could Heinrich use to shake her resolution? His shame and remorse, even his love, held him tongue-tied. He saw that she was no longer the meek gentle Swabian maiden who had shrunk and wept at every hasty word and sharp glance of his. He had slain all human love in her; nothing survived save that large charity of the Saints which binds them to all suffering souls on the earth.

Wofully he consented to her one wish. A simple cell was prepared for her in the wood beside the chapel of Our Lady in the Meadow, and there she dwelt until, in a little while, her gentle spirit was called home.



The Story of the Lost Brother

This is the story written in the chronicle of the Priory of Kilgrimol, which is in Amounderness. It tells of the ancient years before that great inroad of the sea which broke down the high firs of the western forest of Amounderness, and left behind it those tracts of sand and shingle that are now called the Blowing Sands. In those days Oswald the Gentle was Prior of Kilgrimol, and he beheld the inroad of the sea; and afterwards he lived through the suffering and sorrow of the great plague of which people now speak as the Black Death.

Of all monks and men he was the sweetest and gentlest, and long before he was chosen Prior, when he had charge of the youths who wished to be monks, he never wearied of teaching them to feel and care for all God's creatures, from the greatest to the least, and to love all God's works, and to take a great joy even in stones and rocks, and water and earth, and the clouds and the blue air. "For," said he, "according to the flesh all these are in some degree our kinsfolk, and like us they come from the hands of God. Does not Mother Church teach us this, speaking in her prayers of God's creature of fire, and His creature of salt, and His creature of flowers?"

When some of the brotherhood would smile at his gentle sayings, he would answer: "Are these things, then, so strange and childish? Rather, was not this the way of the Lord Jesus? You have read how He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan, and how He was with the wild beasts? All that those words may mean we have not been taught; but well I believe that the wild things came to Him, even as very little children will run to a good man without any doubt of his goodness; and that they recognised His pitifulness and His power to help them; and that He read in their dumb pleading eyes the pain and the travail under which the whole creation groaneth; and that He blessed them, and gave them solace, and told them in some mysterious way of the day of sacrifice and redemption which was drawing near."

Once when the brethren spoke of clearing out the nests from the church tower, because of the clamour of the daws in the morning and evening twilight, the Novice-master—for this was Oswald's title—besought them to remember the words of the Psalmist, King David: "The sparrow hath found an house and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts."

As for the novices, many a legend he told them of the Saints and holy hermits who had loved the wild creatures, and had made them companions or had been served by them in the lonely places of the hills and wildwood. And in this, he taught them, there was nothing strange, for in the book of Hosea, it was written that God would make, for those who served Him, a treaty of peace and a league of love with the beasts and the birds of heaven and the creeping things of the earth, and in the book of Job it was said that even the stones of the field should be in friendship with them.

"And this we see," he would say, "in the life of the blessed Bishop Kieran of Saighir, who was the first Saint born in green Erinn. For he wandered away through the land seeking the little well where he was to found his monastery. That well was in the depths of a hoary wood, and when he drew near it the holy bell which he carried rang clear and bright, as it had been foretold him. So he sat down to rest under a tree, when suddenly a wild boar rushed out of its lair against him; but the breath of God tamed it, and the savage creature became his first disciple, and helped him to fell small trees and to cut reeds and willows so that he might build him a cell. After that there came from brake and copse and dingle and earth and burrow all manner of wild creatures; and a fox, a badger, a wolf, and a doe were among Kieran's first brotherhood. We read, too, that for all his vows the fox made but a crafty and gluttonous monk, and stole the Saint's leather shoes, and fled with them to his old earth. Wherefore Kieran called the religious together with his bell, and sent the badger to bring back the fugitive, and when this was done the Saint rebuked the fox for an unworthy and sinful monk, and laid penance upon him."

When the novices laughed at this adventure, Father Oswald said:

"These things are not matters of faith; you may believe them or not as you will. Perhaps they did not happen in the way in which they are now told, but if they are not altogether true, they are at least images and symbols of truth. But this I have no doubt is true—that when the blessed Columba was Abbot in Iona, he called one of the brethren to him and bade him go on the third day to the western side of the island, and sit on the sea-shore, and watch for a guest who would arrive, weary and hungry, in the afternoon. And the guest would be a crane, beaten by the stormy winds, and it would fall on the beach, unable to fly further. 'And do thou,' said Columba, 'take it up with gentle hands and carry it to the house of the guests, and tend it for three days and three nights, and when it is refreshed it will fly up into the air, and after scanning its path through the clouds it will return to its old sweet home in Erinn; and if I charge thee so earnestly with this service, it is because the guest comes from our dear land.' And the Brother obeyed; and on the third day the crane arrived, storm-beaten and weary, and three days later it departed. Have you not also heard or read how our own St. Godrich at Whitby protected the four-footed foresters, and how a great stag, which had been saved by him from the hunters, came year after year at a certain season to visit him?"

Many legends too he told them of birds as well as beasts, and three of these I will mention here because they are very pleasant to listen to. One was of St. Malo and the wren. The wren, the smallest of all birds, laid an egg in the hood which St. Malo had hung up on a branch while he was working in the field, and the blessed man was so gentle and loving that he would not disturb the bird, but left his hood hanging on the tree till the wren's brood was hatched.

Then there was the legend of St. Meinrad, who lived in a hut made of boughs on Mount Etzel, and had two ravens for his companions. Now it happened that two robbers wandered near the hermitage, and foolishly thinking that some treasure might be hidden there, they slew the Saint. After a long search, in which they found nothing, they went down the mountain to Zurich; but the holy man's ravens followed them with fierce cries, whirling about their heads and dashing at their faces, so that the people in the valley wondered at the sight. But one of the dalesmen who knew the ravens sent his son to the hermitage to see if all was well, and followed the fellows to the town. There they took refuge in a tavern, but the ravens flew round and round the house, screaming and pecking at the window near which the robbers had seated themselves. Speedily the lad came down with the news of the cruel murder; the robbers were seized, and, having confessed their crime, they suffered the torture of death on the wheel.

And lastly there was the legend of St. Servan, who had a robin which perched on his shoulder, and fed from his hand, and joined in with joyful twittering when the Saint sang his hymns and psalms. Now the lads in the abbey-school were jealous of the Saint's favourite pupil, Kentigern, and out of malice they killed the robin and threw the blame on Kentigern. Bitterly the innocent child wept and prayed over the dead bird; and behold! when the Saint came from singing nones in the minster, the robin fluttered up and flew away to meet him, chirruping merrily.

"A thoughtless thing of little blame," said the Novice-master, "was the wickedness of these boys compared with that of the monks of the Abbot Eutychus. The Abbot had a bear to tend his sheep while he was absent and to shut them in their fold at sunset, and when the monks saw that marvel, instead of praising God they were burned up with envy and ill-will, and they killed the bear. Ah, children, it is still possible for us, even in these days, to kill a Saint's robin and an abbot's bear. Let us beware of envy and jealousy and uncharitableness."

In those years when Father Oswald was thus teaching his novices gentleness and compassion, he had but one trouble in his life, and that was the remembrance of a companion of his youth, who had fled from the Priory and disappeared in the noise and tumult of the world's life. As scholars they had been class-mates, and as novices they had been so closely drawn together that each had pledged to the other that whoever died first should, under God's permission, appear to the one still left alive, and reveal to his friend all that may be told of the state of the departed. Now hardly had they been professed monks more than a year when this brother broke his vows and deserted his habit, and fled away under cloud of night. Oswald had never forgotten his friend, and had never ceased to grieve and pray for him. It was the great hope and desire of his heart that, having at last proved the vanity of all that the world can give, this Lost Brother would one day return, like the Prodigal Son, to the house of his boyhood.

As the years went by Prior Anselm grew old and sickened, and at length what was mortal of him fell as the leaf that falls and is trodden in the clay; and the Novice-master was elected Prior in his stead.

Now one of the first great works which the new Prior set his hand to was the making of two large fish-ponds for the monastery. "And so," said he, "not only shall we have other than sea-fish for our table, but in case of fire we shall have store of water at hand. Then, too, it is a pleasant thing to look on sweet water among trees, and to watch the many sorts of silvery fish playing in their clear and silent world. And well it becomes our state of life that we should have this, for of our Lord's Disciples many were fishermen, and fish and bread were the last earthly food our dear Master ate. Now of these ponds let the larger be our Lake of Gennesaret, and surely it shall some time happen to us that we shall see the Lord when the bright morning has come, and that our hearts shall be as a fire of coals upon the shore."

Of the earth dug out of the fish pools he piled up a high mound or barrow, and stocked it well with saplings of oak and beech, ash and pine, and flowering bushes; and about the mound a spiral way wound to the top, and from the top one saw to the four winds over the high woods of Amounderness, and on the west, beyond the forest, the white sands of the shore and the fresh sea. When the saplings grew tall and stout, the green leaves shut out all sight of the Priory; even the tower of the church; and above the trees in the bright air it was as though one had got half-way to heaven.

Now after a little while the Prior reared on the high summit a vast cross of oak, rooted firmly amid huge boulders, and the face of our Lord crucified was turned to the west, and His arms were opened wide to the sea and to the passing ships. And beneath the flying sails, far away, the mariners and fisher-folk could see the cross in the sky, and they bared their heads to the calvary of Kilgrimol. So the name of our house and our Christ was known in strange waters and in distant havens.

All that climbing greenwood of the mound was alive with wild creatures, winged and four-footed, and no one was suffered to disquiet or annoy them. To us it seemed that the Prior was as well known to all the wild things far and near as he was to us, for the little birds fluttered about him, and the squirrels leaped from tree to tree along the way he went, and the fawns ran from the covert to thrust their noses into his hand. And in the winter time, if the snow lay deep and there was any dearth, food was made ready for them and they came in flocks and troops to the Priory, knowing well, one would think, that the Prior would be their loving almoner.

Bee-hives, too, he set up, and grew all manner of flowers, both for the use of the little brown toilers and for the joyance of the brethren; and of the flowers he spoke deep and beautiful parables too many to be told of in this book.

Now in the third year of his rule the Prior heard tidings of the companion he had never forgotten, and he took into his confidence one of the religious named Bede, in whom he had great trust, and he told him the story of their friendship. "And now, Bede," he said, "I would have thee go on a long journey, even to the golden city of London, and seek out my friend. He will easily be found, for men know his name, and he hath grown to some repute, and the good things of this world have not been denied him. And in this I rejoice, for when he hath won all his heart may desire, he will the sooner discover how little is the joy and how fleeting the content. And tell him that so long as I am Prior of this house, so long shall this house be a home waiting for his home-coming. Bid him come to me—if but for a little while, then for a little while be it; but if he longs for rest, this shall be the place of his rest until the end. And if these things cannot be now, then let them be when they may be."

And Bede went on his long wayfaring and found the Lost Brother, a man happy and of fair fame, and blessed with wife and child. And the monk sat with the little maid on his knee, and even while he prayed for her and her father, he understood how it might be that the man was well content, and how that neither to-day nor to-morrow could he return to that old life of the Priory in the forest.

"Yet," said he, "tell the Prior that surely some day I shall see his face again, if it be but for mere love of him for well I know there be among the monks those who would more joyfully rend me or burn me at the stake than give the hand of fellowship to one who has cast aside the cowl."

When he heard of these things the Prior only prayed the more earnestly for the home-coming of his friend.

Now it was in the autumn of that year, at the season when the days and nights are of one length, that the great inroad of the sea befell. The day had been stormy, with a brackish wind clamouring out of the sea, and as the darkness closed in it was with us as it is with blind men who hear and feel the more keenly because of their blindness and all that we heard was the boom of billows breaking on the long shore and the crying and groaning of the old oaks and high firs in the forest. Then in the midmost of the night we were aroused by so terrible a noise, mingled with shrieking and wailing, that we crowded to the Prior's door. Speedily he rose, and we followed him out of doors, wondering what disaster had happened. The moon was shining brightly; shreds of cloud were flying across the cold sky; the air was full of the taste of salt.

As we gazed about us we saw that the cloisters and the garth and all the space within the walls were crowded with wild birds—sea-fowl and crows, pheasant and blackcock, starlings and thrushes, stonechats and yellow-hammers, and hundreds of small winged creatures cowering for shelter. And when the Prior bade us throw open the monastery gates, out of the sombre gloom of the forest the scared woodlanders came crowding, tame and panting. No one had ever realised that so many strange creatures, in fur and pelt, housed in the green ways. Even the names of many of them we did not know, for we had never set eyes on them before; but among those that were within our knowledge were coneys and hares, stoats and weasels, foxes and badgers, many deer with their does and fawns, and one huge grey creature of savage aspect which we took to be an old wolf.

The Prior ordered that the gates should be left open for any fugitives that might seek refuge, and he went among the wild beasts, calming them with a touch of his hand and blessing them. Then there came a woman, with a child at her bosom and a little lad clinging to her dress, but she was so distracted with fright that she was unable to say what had happened.

When he had given directions for the care of all these strange guests, the Prior climbed up the mound through the tossing trees, and when he had reached the summit he saw to his amazement that the sea had risen in a mighty flood and poured for miles into the forest. The huge oaks and pines of centuries had gone down in thousands, and over their fallen trunks and broken branches the white billows were tumbling and leaping in clouds of spray in the moonlight. Happily the land sloped away to the north, so that unless the wind changed and blew against us the Priory seemed to be in no present danger. Overhead the great cross vibrated in the storm, and the face of the Christ gazed seaward, and the holy arms were opened wide. The sight of that divine figure filled the Prior's heart with peace and confidence. "Whether to live or to die," he murmured, "in Thee, O Lord, have we placed our trust."

Such was the terrible inroad of the sea which broke the western forest of Amounderness. For many a day the land lay in salt swamp till the sands were blown over it and buried the fallen timber; and afterwards the very name of Forest was forgotten, and the people called all that part the Field-lands.

Now it was in this same year that the grievous pestilence named the Black Death raged in England; but it was not till the winter had gone by that it reached Amounderness. Then were seen those terrible days when ships sailed the seas with crews of dead men, and when on land there was burying without sorrow and flight without safety, for though many fled they could not escape the evil, and so many died that the wells of sorrow ran dry. And because of the horror of so many deaths, it was forbidden to toll the bells any longer lest men should go mad. Often no hand could be got for love or for gold to touch the sick or to carry the departed to their graves. When the graveyards were filled, thousands were buried, without a prayer or a last look, in deep trenches salted with quicklime, on the commons or in an open field. Many a street in many a town fell suddenly silent and deserted, and grass grew between the stones of the causeway. Here and there fires were kept burning night and day to purify the air, but this availed little. In many a thorpe and village all the inhabitants were swept away and even robbers and desperate vagrants were too greatly in fear of infection to enter the ownerless houses. Sometimes in the fields one saw little children, and perchance an aged woman, trying to manage a plough or to lead a waggon.

When this trouble fell upon the people the Prior sent out various of the brethren to aid the suffering and to comfort the bereaved; but when many of the monks themselves were stricken down and died within the hour, a great dread took hold of the others, so that they were unwilling to expose themselves to danger.

The Prior rebuked them for their lack of faith and the coldness of their charity. "When the beasts and wild creatures suffered we had compassion on them," he said; "what folly is this that we shall have care for them and yet feel no pity for men and women in their misery! Do you fear that you too may be taken off by this pestilence? Who, then, has told you that you shall not die if only you can escape the pestilence? Daily you pray, 'Thy kingdom come,' and daily you seek that it shall not come to-day."

He went abroad himself unweariedly with one or other of the brethren, doing such good as he was able, and when he had returned home and taken a little rest he set out once more. Now one night as he and Brother Bede returned belated through the forest, they were startled as they approached the gate to hear the weeping and moaning of one who lay forsaken on the cold earth; and when the Prior called out through the darkness, "Be of good cheer, Christian soul, we are coming to your aid," the sufferer replied by rattling the lid of his clap-dish, and at once they knew it was some poor leper who had fallen helpless by the way.

"Patience, brother," said the Prior; and bidding his companion open the wicket, he lifted the wretched outcast from the ground and carried him in his arms into the great hall. "Rest here a little," he said, "till we can bring you light and fire and food."

The Prior and Bede hastened to call the brethren who had charge of these matters, but when they returned with the other monks they found the great hall shining with a wonderful light and filled with a marvellous fragrance of flowers, and on the seat where the leper had been placed there lay a golden rose, but the leper himself had vanished.

Then a great joy cast fear out of the hearts of the brotherhood, and they laboured without ceasing in the stricken villages. Many of them died, but it was without sorrow or repining, and the face of each was touched with the golden rose ere he was laid to his rest.

Now the pestilence of that year was stayed by a bitter winter, and snow lay deep even in the forest, and great blocks of ice littered the shore of the bleak sea. And in the depth of the winter, when it drew near the Nativity, there came riding to the monastery a stranger, who asked to see the Prior. When the Prior looked into the man's face the tears started and ran down his own, and he opened his arms to him, and drew him to his breast and kissed him. For this was indeed the Lost Brother. And when he had thus given him welcome, the Prior said: "I ask no questions; what you can tell me you shall tell when the fitting time comes. But this is your home to have or to leave, for you are as free as the winds of heaven."

And the Lost Brother replied: "Wise are you no less than good. The plague has bereft me of the child, and of the mother of the child. More I cannot tell you now."

Thus to the Priori great happiness the companion of his youth returned from wandering the ways of the world.

When the weeks passed, and still he remained a silent and solitary stranger, the religious spoke sharply among themselves of the presence of one who had broken vows and revelled in the joys of life, and had been received without censure or reproof. Then the Prior, wrathful now even on account of his gentleness, rebuked them once again: "O eyes of stone and hearts of water, are you so slow to learn? Have you who sheltered the wild creatures no thought for this man of much sorrow? Have you who buried the dead no prayer and no tenderness for this soul of the living?"

More than once the Lost Brother seemed to awake from a dream, and spoke of going forth again from this home or quiet, saying: "Truly this is great peace and solace to me, but I am not of you; my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor is yours my way of life. Indeed, though I were to will it never so, I could not repent of what I have done. Let me go; why should I be an offence and a stone of stumbling to those who are righteous among you?"

But the Prior silenced him, asking gently: "Do we distress you with any of these things? God has His times and seasons, and will not be hastened. At least so long as you find peace and rest here, remain with us."

"You are strangely wise and gentle," the Lost Brother answered. "God, I doubt it not, has His times and seasons; but with me I know not at all what He will do."

It was no long while after this that the Prior fell into a grievous illness; and when he knew that his hour was drawing nigh, he besought the monks to bear him up to the foot of the cross on the mound. There, as he looked far abroad into the earth over the tree-tops, he smiled with lightness of heart and said: "If the earth be so beautiful and so sweet, what must the delight of Paradise be?"

And behold! a small brown squirrel came down a tree, and ran across and nestled in the holy man's bosom, and its eyes were full of tears. The Prior stroked and caressed it, and said: "God bless thee, little woodlander, and may the nuts never fail thee!"

Then, gazing up into the blue sky and the deep spaces of air above, he murmured in a low voice, "It is a very awful and lonely way to go!"

"Not so awful for you," replied the companion of his youth. "That blue way has been beaten plain by the Lord Christ, and the Apostles, and many holy men from the beginning."

A long while the Prior lay musing before he spoke again, and then he said: "I remember me of an ancient saying which I had long forgotten. A year for the life of a—nay, I know not what any longer. But after that it runs, And three for the life of a field; and thrice the life of a field for the life of a hound; and thrice the life of a hound for the life of a horse; and thrice the life of a horse for the life of a man; and thrice the life of a man for the life of a stag; and thrice the life of a stag for the life of an ouzel; and thrice the life of an ouzel for the life of an eagle; and thrice the life of an eagle for the life of a salmon; and thrice the life of a salmon for the life of a yew; but the Lord God liveth for ever—the Lord God liveth for ever!"

That same night the alabaster box was broken and the precious ointment poured out. And on the Prior's breast they placed the golden rose, and under the great red hawthorn in the midst of the cloister-garth they laid him, O Lord, beneath the earth which is Thy footstool.

At the same hour in which he was taken from us there was a great crying and lamentation of the wild creatures in the forest, and the tall stags bellowed and clashed their antlers against the gates of the monastery.

In the place of Prior Oswald, Father Bede was made Prior.

Whether the spirit of Prior Oswald ever returned to earth the book does not tell, but the Lost Brother, the companion of his youth, lived in the house of Kilgrimol to old age, and in the days of Bede's rule he made a good end.



The King Orgulous

To and fro in the open cloister of Essalona walked the monk Desiderius, musing and musing. Every now and again he stayed in his paces to feed a tall white stork and two of her young, which stood on the parapet between the pillars of the cloister; and though for the most part his dole went to the storklings, the mother was well content with his stroking of her head and soft white backfeathers.

Then he resumed his slow walk, turning over and over in his perplexed mind the questions of grace and nature, and praying for light in the obscure ways where reason groped darkling. Meanwhile the storks stood grave and patient, as if they too had matter for deep musing.

As in this day, so in the ancient time the convent of Essalona was perched on a beetling crag on the northern side of the Sarras mountains. There the mighty ridge, with its belts of virgin pinewood and its stony knolls and pastoral glens, breaks off suddenly in a precipitous escarpment; and, a thousand feet below, the land is an immense green plain, sweeping away to the blue limits of the north. It is as though the sea had once on a time run up to the mountain wall and torn down the tawny rocks for sand and shingle, and had then drawn back into the north, leaving the good acres to grow green in the sun. Through the plain winds a river, bright and slow; in many places the fruitful level is ruffled with thicket and coppice; and among the far fields the white walls of farms and hamlets glitter amid their boskage. When the clear sunlight fell on that still expanse of quiet earth, one might see, in those days, the stone towers and sparkling pinnacles of the royal city of Sarras, with a soft blue feather of smoke floating over it.

Often had Desiderius let his eyes rest on the smoulder and gleam of that busy city, which was all so hushed and dreamlike in the distance, little thinking the while that one day he should dwell within its walls, and play a strange part in the deeds that men remember.

From the brink of the escarpment rises the rock of Essalona, and the convent is built on the edge of the rock, in such sort that, leaning over the parapet of the open cloister, Desiderius might have dropped a pebble sheer down to the plain below. A single path wound up the rock to the gate, so narrow and steep that one sturdy lay-brother might have held the way with a thresher's flail against a score of men-at-arms.



Here, then, in this solitary house, Desiderius dwelt with five other brethren, all good and faithful men; but he, the youngest and yet the most learned in philosophy and star-lore and the sacred Scriptures and the books of the wise, was the most meek and lowly of heart. No pains did he spare his body or his spirit to master the deep knowledge of divine things. Diligent by day, he eked out the light of the stars with the lamp of the firefly, or conned his page by the dim shining of the glow-worm along the lines.

Now as he mused in the cloister he stopped short with a deep sigh, and stood before the storks, and said: "Away, happy birds; you have leave. Disport yourselves, soaring very high in the sunny heavens, or take your rest on our roofs. I have appeased you with food; but to the hunger of my soul who shall minister?"

At his word the storks flapped their wings and rose from the parapet, and went sailing up into the sunshine; and Desiderius heard at his shoulder a most sweet and gracious voice saying: "What is thy hunger, and wherein wouldst thou have me minister to thee?"

Turning about, Desiderius saw that it was an Angel which spoke, and he fell at the bright spirit's feet, abashed and in great dread. But the Angel raised him up, and gave him courage, saying: "O Desiderius, most dear to me (for I am thine Angel Guardian), do not tremble to tell me; but speak to me even as thou wouldst speak to a man of thy brethren."

Then said Desiderius: "Show to me and make plain, I pray thee, the mystery of the grace of God in the heart of man."

"Many are the mysteries of God," said the Angel, "whereof even the highest of the Archangels may not sustain the splendour, and this is one of them. Howbeit, if thou wilt be patient and prayerful, and wilt repose thy trust in the Lord Christ, I will strive to show thee two pictures of thy very self—one, to wit, of the natural Adam in Desiderius, and one of the man redeemed by the blood shed for thee. So in some wise shalt thou come to some dim light of this mystery of grace divine. Will that suffice thee?"

"That, Lord Angel, will suffice," said the monk, bowing low before the Angel.

"Wait, then, and watch; and even in thy body and before thou diest thou shalt behold as I have said."

Therewith the Angel left him, and Desiderius was aware of but the walls and pillars of the cloister, and the bright vast plain, and, far away, the city of Sarras glittering, and the smoke sleeping like a small blue cloud above it. And the coming and going of the Angel was after this manner. Desiderius perceived him, bright in the brightness of the sunshine, as one perceives a morsel of clear ice floating in clear water; and when Desiderius saw him no more it was as though the clear ice had melted into the clear water.

Now after the lapse of three short years, and when he was but in his thirtieth summer, Desiderius was summoned from his cell on the lonely mountain, and, despite his tears and supplications and his protestations of ignorance and inexperience and extreme youth, made Archbishop of Sarras. Only one answer was vouchsafed to him. "One of thy vows was entire obedience, and the grace of God is sufficient for thee."

In that same year a horde of the fierce Avars poured out from the round green earth-walls of their mysterious stronghold, which lay beyond Danube, and, crossing the river, fell on Sarras; and clashing with that ravening horde, Astulf the King of Sarras was slain.

Ill had it then fared with the folk of Sarras, city and plain alike, but for a certain Talisso, a free-rider, who from a green knoll had watched the onset. When he saw the slaying of the King, he plunged into the battle, cleaving his way through the ranks of squat and swarthy Avars; and heartening the men of Sarras with his ringing cheer and battle-laughter, shaped them into wedges of sharp iron and drove them home through the knotted wood of their foemen, till the Avars fled hot-foot to Danube water, and through the water, and beyond, and so reached the strait doorways of their earth-bound stronghold, the Hring.

Now, seeing that the King of Sarras had left neither child nor brother to heirship, and that their deliverer was a stalwart champion, young and nobly statured, and handsome and gracious as he was valiant, frank too and open-handed, and that moreover he seemed a man skilled in the mastery of men and in affairs of rule, the fighting men of Sarras thought that no better fortune could befall them than they should choose this Talisso for their king. To Sarras therefore they carried him with them on their merry home-going, and having entered the free town, called the Council of Elders to say yea or nay. With few words the Elders confirmed the choice, and the joy-bells were rung, and great was the rejoicing of all men, gentle and simple, that God had sent them so goodly a man for their ruler and bulwark.