about all the upper occupations and professions
the country could show, and a corresponding variety of costume.
There were young men and old men, young women and old women,
lively folk and grave folk. They rode upon mules and horses, and
there was not a side-saddle in the party; for this specialty was
to remain unknown in England for nine hundred years yet.

It was a pleasant, friendly, sociable herd; pious, happy, merry and
full of unconscious coarsenesses and innocent indecencies. What
they regarded as the merry tale went the continual round and caused
no more embarrassment than it would have caused in the best English
society twelve centuries later. Practical jokes worthy of the
English wits of the first quarter of the far-off nineteenth century
were sprung here and there and yonder along the line, and compelled
the delightedest applause; and sometimes when a bright remark was
made at one end of the procession and started on its travels toward
the other, you could note its progress all the way by the sparkling
spray of laughter it threw off from its bows as it plowed along;
and also by the blushes of the mules in its wake.

Sandy knew the goal and purpose of this pilgrimage, and she posted
me. She said:

"They journey to the Valley of Holiness, for to be blessed of the
godly hermits and drink of the miraculous waters and be cleansed
from sin."

"Where is this watering place?"

"It lieth a two-day journey hence, by the borders of the land that
hight the Cuckoo Kingdom."

"Tell me about it. Is it a celebrated place?"

"Oh, of a truth, yes. There be none more so. Of old time there
lived there an abbot and his monks. Belike were none in the world
more holy than these; for they gave themselves to study of pious
books, and spoke not the one to the other, or indeed to any, and
ate decayed herbs and naught thereto, and slept hard, and prayed
much, and washed never; also they wore the same garment until it
fell from their bodies through age and decay. Right so came they
to be known of all the world by reason of these holy austerities,
and visited by rich and poor, and reverenced."

"Proceed."

"But always there was lack of water there. Whereas, upon a time,
the holy abbot prayed, and for answer a great stream of clear
water burst forth by miracle in a desert place. Now were the
fickle monks tempted of the Fiend, and they wrought with their
abbot unceasingly by beggings and beseechings that he would co