drowned,
every man of them," said the hermit with much content, looking at
me with some wonder when I laughed.

"They would not be the first by many a score whom we have buried
here," he said in reproof. "Aye, heathen Lochlann and Christian
Scot, and homely Erse yonder. It is good to see even a few who have
escaped from this shore."

He bowed his head for a moment, and his lips moved. Then he turned
to Dalfin as a councillor might turn to his prince, and asked what
he would have the brothers do for him.

"Come and ask the lady," answered Dalfin, and so we went to the
fire, where Gerda and Bertric rose up to meet us.

Now the hermit had set aside his fear of the lady, if he had any
beyond his rules, and welcomed her in Erse, which I had to
translate. Also he told her that what shelter he and his brethren
could give was hers, if she would be content with poor housing.

"Thank him, and tell him that any roof will be welcome after the
ship's deck," she said, smiling at the hermit.

"Ask him to send men and help us get our stores ashore and out of
the way of the fisher folk, who will be here as soon as they see
the wreck," said Bertric. "No need to tell him that the stores are
treasure for the most part."

"Tell him it is treasure, and it will be all the safer," Dalfin
said. "These are holy monks, of a sort who care for poverty more
than wealth. This man was well born, as you may guess from his
speech."

I told the hermit what Bertric needed, and he laughed, saying that
the whole brotherhood would come and help at once. And then he bade
us follow him. We went across the moorland for about half a mile,
to the foot of the hill or nearly, and then came on a little valley
amid the rising ground, where trees grew, low and wind twisted, but
green and pleasant; and there I saw a cluster of little stone huts
for all the world like straw beehives, built of stones most
cunningly, mortarless, but fitting into one another perfectly.

The huts were set in a rough circle, and each had its door toward
the sun, and a little square window alongside that, and a
smoke-blackened hole in the top of the roof. Doubtless it was from
one of these that Bertric had seen the smoke from the sea, though
there was none now. From the hill and down the valley across the
space between the huts ran a little brook, crossed in two or three
places by wandering paths, some with a stepping stone, and others
with only a muddy jumping place. The stream