With the poultry in the yard, which he fed very regularly, he also talked a good deal. "If you are very good, and the brothers do not return," he once said, "Heribald will preach you a sermon."--In the monastery itself, he also found plenty of amusement, for in a single day of solitude, a man can hatch a good many useful ideas. The camerarius had angered him, by refusing to give him the necessary shoe-leather; so Heribald went up to the cell of the camerarius, smashed to pieces his large, stone water-jug, as well as his three flower-pots, and then opening the straw mattress, he took out some of the straw, and put in the broken crockery instead. Having achieved this feat, he lay down on it, and on feeling the hard and sharp-edged contents tolerably unpleasant, he smiled contentedly and betook himself to the Abbot's apartments. Towards the Abbot he also bore a grudge, as he was indebted to him for many a sound whipping; but in his rooms, everything was locked up, and in excellent order. So nothing was left to him, but to cut off one of the legs of the cushioned easy-chair. Having done this, he cunningly placed it back in its old place, as if nothing whatever had happened. "That will break down nicely with him, when he comes home, and sits comfortably on it. 'Thou shalt castigate the flesh,' says St. Benedict. But Heribald has not cut off the chair's foot.--The Huns have done it." The duty of prayer and psalm-singing he performed regularly, as the rules of the order prescribed. The seven times for prayer each day, the solitary man strictly adhered to, as if he could be punished for missing them; and he descended also every night into the cloister-church, there to hold the midnight vigil. At the same hour, when his brothers were carousing in the hall of the ducal castle with the monks of St. Gall, Heribald was standing in the choir. The dark, dreary shadows of night enveloped the aisle, in which the everlasting lamp was dimly burning; but fearlessly and with a clear voice, Heribald intoned the first verse: "Oh Lord, deliver me from evil"--and then sang the third psalm, which David had once sung, when he fled before his son Absalon. When he came to the place where the antiphon was to fall in, according to custom, he stopped, waiting for the responses. Everything remained silent and still, however. Heribald passed his hand over his forehead, and said: "Ah, I forgot! They are all gone, and Heribald is alone." Then he wanted to sing the forty-ninth psalm, as the nightly service required,--when the everlasting lamp went out, a bat having extinguished it with its wings. Outside, storm and rain were raging. Heavy drops fell on the roof of the church, and beat against the windows. Heribald began to shudder.