rking
in these tranquil vale-sides, in their sweet low pastures, in the belt
of scattered woodland above them, in the rills of pure water which
lisped from the open down beyond?" Making what was really a boy's
experience, he had a wholly boyish delight in his holiday, and
certainly did not reflect how much we beget for ourselves in what we
see and feel, nor how far a certain diffused music in the very breath
of the place was the creation of his own ear or brain.

[151] That strange enigmatic owner of the harp and the bow, whom he had
found sleeping so divinely, actually waited on them the next morning
with all obsequiousness, stirred the great fire of peat, adjusted duly
their monkish attire, laid their meal. It seemed an odd thing to be
served thus, like St. Jerome by the lion, as if by some imperiously
beautiful wild animal tamed. You hesitated to permit, were a little
afraid of, his services. Their silent tonsured porter himself,
contrast grim enough to any creature of that kind, had been so far
seduced as to permit him to sleep there in the Grange, as he loved to
do, instead of in ruder, rougher quarters; and, coaxed into odd
garrulity on this one matter, told the new-comers the little he knew,
with much also that he only suspected, about him; among other things,
as to the origin of those precious objects, which might have belonged
to some sanctuary or noble house, found thus in the possession of a
mere labourer, who is no Frenchman, but a pagan, or gipsy, white as he
looks, from far south or east, and who works or plays furtively, by
night for the most part, returning to sleep awhile before daybreak.
The other herdsmen of the valley are bond-servants, but he a hireling
at will, though coming regularly at a certain season. He has come thus
for any number of years past, though seemingly never grown older (as
the speaker reflects), singing his way meagrely from farm to farm, to
the sound of [152] his harp. His name?--It was scarcely a name at all,
in the diffident syllables he uttered in answer to that question, on
first coming there; but of names known to them it came nearest to a
malignant one in Scripture, Apollyon. Apollyon had a just discernible
tonsure, but probably no right to it.

Well skilled in architecture, Prior Saint-Jean was set, by way of a
holiday task, to superintend the completion of the great monastic barn
then in building. The visitor admires it still; perhaps supposes it,
with its noble ai