while those of the hermits are tinted with light brown. [Illustration: _Funeral Service of a Hermit._] If the reader has wondered how the one hermitage could accommodate these seven additional habitants, the romancer does not forget to satisfy his curiosity: a few pages farther we read--"So at the season of the night they went all to their beds, for they all lay in one chamber." It was not very unusual for hermitages to be built for more than one occupant; but probably, in all such cases, each hermit had his own cell, adjoining their common chapel. This was the original arrangement of the hermits of the Thebais in their laura. The great difference between a hermitage with more than one hermit, and a small cell of one of the other religious orders, was that in such a cell one monk or friar would have been the prior, and the others subject to him; but each hermit was independent of any authority on the part of the other; he was subject only to the obligation of his rule, and the visitation of his bishop. The life[106] of the famous hermit, Richard of Hampole, which has lately been published for the first time by the Early English Text Society, will enable us to realise in some detail the character and life of a mediæval hermit of the highest type. Saint Richard was born[107] in the village of Thornton, in Yorkshire. At a suitable age he was sent to school by the care of his parents, and afterwards was sent by Richard Neville, Archdeacon of Durham, to Oxford, where he gave himself specially to theological study. At the age of nineteen, considering the uncertainty of life and the awfulness of judgment, especially to those who waste life in pleasure or spend it in acquiring wealth, and fearing lest he should fall into such courses, he left Oxford and returned to his father's house. One day he asked of his sister two of her gowns (tunicas), one white, the other grey, and a cloak and hood of his father's. He cut up the two gowns, and fashioned out of them and of the hooded cloak an imitation of a hermit's habit, and next day he went off into a neighbouring wood bent upon living a hermit life. Soon after, on the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, he went to a certain church, and knelt down to pray in the place which the wife of a certain worthy knight, John de Dalton, was accustomed to occupy. When the lady came to church, her servants would have turned out the intruder, but she would not permit it. When vespers were over and he rose from his knees, the sons of Sir John, who were students at Oxford, recognised him as the son of William Rolle, whom they had known at Oxford. Next day Richard again went to the same church, and without any bidding put on a surplice and sang mattins and the office of the mass with the rest. And when the gospel was to be read at mass, he sought the blessing of the priest, and then entered the pulpit and preached a sermon to the people of such wonderful edification that many