Thus Ralph, the seventh abbot, had begun life as a soldier. He was a contemporary of Robin Hood, who in the ballad met a friar of Fountains and by him was soundly ducked in the middle of the little river. Richard of the Lion Heart was at that time ruling England after his fashion. Men were marching across Europe to the Holy Land. The profession of arms must have appealed strongly in those days to the heroic, and even to the religious nature of many men. But Ralph did not like it. It displeased him much. And one day, coming to Fountains, where his father had already become a monk, he consulted a lay-brother, whose name was Sunnulph, _homo simplex et illiteratus_ but wise in the counsels of God. And presently, the soldier and the brother each had a dream in the same day. The knight dreamed that he was in a church, and that the figure on the crucifix cried saying, “Why do you not come? Why do you wait?” To which he replied with tears, “Behold, Lord, I come!” The monk, sleeping in the long dormitory over the storehouse, saw the soldier dressed in a monastic habit. So Ralph became a monk, and presently an abbot. The possibility of that promotion brought some men into the monastery. In a world hopelessly divided into classes, the monastery was the residence of democracy. Here the humblest man, if he could but read and write, might rise as he deserved, to be the kitchener, the hospitaller, the sacrist, the cellarer; some day--who could tell?--the abbot, wearing a mitre, consorting on terms of equality with the noblest in the realm, ruling his fellow men. But here are the brethren sitting in the chill cloister, reading their good books, and awaiting the day. At the first light the bell rang and they went again into the church for the psalms of lauds. After that, they returned to the dormitory and washed their hands and faces in the room over the river. By this time the sun was fairly up, and the hour was come for the psalms of prime. The first psalm, according to the gracious arrangement of St. Benedict, they said very slowly, in order to give late-comers time to get in. Prime was followed by mass or by chapter meeting, the order differing with the season of the year. The monastic year was in two parts: winter began on September 14, being Holy Cross day, a date still used in the Prayer-Book for determining the autumnal ember days; summer began at Easter. Out of the church, from prime or mass, the brethren proceeded to the chapter-house. This great hall opened through three noble arches from the east walk of the cloister. Two of these arches were blocked, as it appears, by book closets; but not at the beginning. The books were probably stored at first, as in other Cistercian abbeys, in the room between the transept and the chapter-house. Afterwards this room was put to other uses.