The times were full of peril, and a strong and able man was necessary for the post. But Tyssilio was not the right person for the occasion; he hated war, knew nothing of its practice, and, above all, objected to marrying his deceased brother’s wife, and she such a masterful woman. So he refused. His sister-in-law took this as a personal affront. She was incapable of understanding that Tyssilio had a vocation for the monastic life, could not believe that he was intellectually and morally unfit for a life of war, and assumed that his refusal was due to personal dislike of herself. Therefore, as an offended woman, she did all in her power to injure and annoy the monks of Meifod. The position of Tyssilio, close to Mathrafal, where the slighted widow resided, became intolerable. She seized the revenues of the abbey; and Tyssilio, to free his monks from persecution, fled with a few attached to his person and left Wales, crossed the sea, and entered the estuary of the Rance, near where now stands S. Malo. The river forms a broad estuary of blue glittering water, up which the mighty tides heave gently, the waves broken and torn by a natural breakwater. Ascending this river for four miles, he found a point of high land with a long creek on the north, making of it a narrow peninsula. On this point of land Tyssilio drew up his boat, and there resolved on settling. Tyssilio, like a prudent man, had not left Wales without taking his _chef de cuisine_ with him, and this master of the kitchen, monk though he was, had an amour with a girl on the opposite side of the Rance. He was wont, Leander-like, to swim across and visit her. On one occasion as he was crossing, a monstrous conger eel curled itself about him, and the poor cook was in dire alarm. He invoked all the saints to come to his aid--Samson, Malo, his own master Tyssilio--none could deliver him till he thought on Maglorius of Sark, and called on him for assistance. At the same moment it occurred to him that he had his knife attached to his girdle, and unsheathing that, he hacked and sliced at the conger till it relaxed its hold, and so the poor fellow got across alive, and vowed he would never again go a-courting.