oir sang
the antiphon, "And the foundations of the wall were garnished with all
manner of precious stones," they threw costly rings and jewels and
chains of gold into the trench; and how years and generations passed
away, and abbots and bishops and architects and masons and sculptors
and labourers died, but new men took their places, and still the vast
work went on, and the beautiful pile rose higher and higher into the
everlasting heavens.

Then, too, we looked back at the vanished times when the world was all
so different from our world of to-day; and in green and fruitful spots
among the hills and on warm river-lawns and in olden cities of narrow
streets and overhanging roofs, there were countless abbeys and priories
and convents; and thousands of men and women lived the life of prayer
and praise and austerity and miracle and vision which is described in
the legends of the Saints. We lingered in the pillared cloisters where
the black-letter chronicles were written in Latin, and music was scored
and hymns were composed, and many a rare manuscript was illuminated in
crimson and blue and emerald and gold; and we looked through the fair
arches into the cloister-garth where in the green sward a grave lay
ever ready to receive the remains of the next brother who should pass
away from this little earth to the glory of Paradise. What struck W.
V. perhaps most of all was, that in some leafy places these holy houses
were so ancient that even the blackbirds and throstles had learned to
repeat some of the cadences of the church music, and in those places
the birds still continue to pipe them, though nothing now remains of
church or monastery except the name of some field or street or well,
which people continue to use out of old habit and custom.

[Illustration: _Women lived the life of prayer and praise_]

It was with the thought of helping the busy little brain to realise
something of that bygone existence, with its strange modes of thought,
its unquestioning faith in the unseen and eternal, its vivid
consciousness of the veiled but constant presence of the holy and
omnipotent God, its stern self-repression and its tender charity, its
lovely ideals and haunting legends, that I told W. V. the stories in
this little book. It mattered little to her or to me that that
existence had its dark shadows contrasting with its celestial light: it
was the light that concerned us, not the shadows.

Some of the stories were told on