An enthusiastic welcome ensued, and before long David, Teilo, Aidan, Ismail and the rest had been seated by the fire and supplied with food and drink. This was the Age of the Saints. Besides the newcomers there were some dozen holy men, whose names are living yet, sitting about upon the ground, each one bound for the great synod of the Cymric priesthood. In the mouth of the largest cave squatted an elderly man, sallow and wrinkled, with a beak-like nose and weary eyes; he had vellum, pen, and inkhorn, and wrote sedulously, giving himself no respite, with a heavy frown between his brows the while. David knew him for Gildas of Strathclyde, the apostle of Ruys in Lesser Britain. They yielded early to their fatigue, and lay down where they best might, most of them within the shelter of the caves. Gildas put aside his pen. "They are all mightily drunken with the use and custom of sins!" he thundered. "If I reckoned without pause for ten years, the scandals concerning the high men of Britain would not be enumerated--and concerning also our monks and ordained priests (Have mercy, have mercy, on us miserable sinners!). Our princes are a host of devils--nay, worse than devils, for have they not received the sign and sacrament of baptism? Lust, and pillage, and oppression are such as were never before since the creation of the world. Stinking to heaven is Gomorrah--I should say Aberffraw! And there dwells the most heinous, the Satan of them all--and that is Maelgwn Gwenedd!" David yawned, said a prayer for his kinsman Maelgwn, stretched himself, and fell asleep. At the first glimmer of dawn, they were awakened by the clanging of Gildas's bell. Their prayer said, David went to bathe in the brook near by. When he returned to the camp-fire, Gildas, his countenance sallower than usual, twisting and biting his lips, had just bent down to the simmering pot that hung over the flames, with a loaf of bread in his hand, when the mongrel grey-hound darted up to him, made an ecstatic leap, and snatching the loaf in his teeth, rushed away with it down the hill-side. David's laugh pealed loud and clear. The holy Gildas turned furiously upon a little boy, one of his pupils, who stood beside him rubbing sleepy eyes, and abused him for not giving his master warning of what he must have seen was likely to occur. The bishop of Mynyw ran as fast as he could after the thief. Some distance below, in the valley, he caught his dog, beat and scolded him, and possessed himself of the bread. In the village at the hill's foot, he admired a cottager's leeks, and was given a handful. He then re-ascended the hill. "The sour-faced hawk!" thought he. "I am glad, very glad, he did not obtain the rule of Mynwy when he tried to supersede me, long ago!" Gildas confronted him. "Ill is thy laughter, Dewi mab Sandde!" he spluttered hoarsely. "For a holy man of God--such conduct is light...."