the log, while Guy slept in his
mail-cart in the dappled shelter of the dingle; others by a winter fire
when the days were short, and the cry of the wind in the dark made it
easy for one to believe in wolves; others in the Surrey hills, a year
ago, in a sandy hollow crowned with bloom of the ling, and famous for a
little pool where the martins alight to drink and star the mud with a
maze of claw-tracks; and yet again, others, this year,[1] under the dry
roof of the pines of Anstiebury, when the fosse of the old Briton
settlement was dripping with wet, and the woods were dim with the smoke
of rain, and the paths were red with the fallen bloom of the red
chestnuts and white with the flourish of May and brown with the catkins
of the oak, and the cuckoo, calling in Mosses Wood, was answered from
Redlands and the Warren, and the pines where we sat (snug and dry)
looked so solemn and dark that, with a little fancy, it was easy to
change the living greenwood into the forest of stone.

As they were told, under the pressure of an insatiable listener, so
have they been written, save for such a phrase, here and there, as
slips more readily from the pen than from the tongue.

Of the stories which were told, but which have not been written for
this book, if W. V. should question me, I shall answer in the wise
words of the Greybeard of Broce-Liande: "However hot thy thirst, and
however pleasant to assuage it, leave clear water in the well."

[1] The year of the happy hills, 1898.

The Song of the Minster

When John of Fulda became Prior of Hethholme, says the old chronicle,
he brought with him to the Abbey many rare and costly books--beautiful
illuminated missals and psalters and portions of the Old and New
Testament. And he presented rich vestments to the Minster; albs of
fine linen, and copes embroidered with flowers of gold. In the west
front he built two great arched windows filled with marvellous storied
glass. The shrine of St. Egwin he repaired at vast outlay, adorning it
with garlands in gold and silver, but the colour of the flowers was in
coloured gems, and in like fashion the little birds in the nooks of the
foliage. Stalls and benches of carved oak he placed in the choir; and
many other noble works he had wrought in his zeal for the glory of
God's house.

In all the western land was there no more fair or stately Minster than
this of the Black Monks, with the peaceful township on one side, and on
the o