to see
Joseph beside me, in the homely clothes which had replaced his "Sunday
best"; to see Finois and his pack full of my friendly belongings. But
I clung to the comfortable present for a few moments only. The spell
of dead centuries had me in its grip. Farther and farther back into
the land of dead days, I journeyed with St. Bernard, and helped him
found the monastery which the eyes of my flesh had not yet seen. The
eyes of my spirit saw the place, the nerves of my spirit felt the
chill of its remoteness. And even when I waked again, I could not be
sure that I was Montagu Lane, an idle young man of the twentieth
century, who had come for the gratification of a whim to this
fastness where greater men had ventured in peril and self-sacrifice.

Imagination is the one possession having which no man can be poor, or
mean, or insignificant. He can walk with kings, and he can see the
high places of the world with seeing eyes, a gift which no money can
give; and yet he will have to suffer as those without imagination
never can suffer or picture others suffering.

I told myself this, somewhat grandiloquently, and with
self-gratulation, as I rubbed shoulders with certain of the world's
heroes who had passed along this way; and there was physical relief
after a strain, when the precipitous valley widened into billowy
pastures lying green at the rugged feet of mountains. Can any sound be
more soothing than the tinkle of cow-bells in a mountain pass, as
twilight falls softly, like the wings of a brooding bird? It is to the
ear what a cool draught of spring water is to thirsty lips. There are
verses of poetry in it, only to be reset and rearranged, like pearls
fallen from their string; there is a perfume of primroses in it; there
is the colour of early dawn, or of fading sunset, when a young moon is
rising, curved and white as a baby's arm; there is also the same voice
that speaks from the brook or the river running over rocks.

Suddenly we were in the midst of a great herd of cows, which blew out
volumes of clover breath upon us, in mild surprise at our existence.
They rubbed against us, or ambled away, lowing to each other, and I
was surprised to find that, instead of each neck being provided with a
bell, as I had fancied from the multitudinous tinklings, one cow only
was thus ornamented.

"How was the selection made?" I asked Joseph. "Did they choose the
most popular cow, a sort of stable-yard belle, voted by her companions