which blessed his sleep, into scenes as bright as the chapel of Saint Etheldreda in the abbey church, on the great day of the saint’s festival, when a thousand waxen tapers are burning, and the whole air is loaded with incense and with music. It was the sunshine of a good conscience shining inwardly. Now, while it fared thus with the captive below, much talk and discussion took place among divers of the honest monks above; for, notwithstanding the great care which had been taken to send away the Ely folk, and to seize and gag Elfric as soon as he came within the gate, the cry of the men of Ely, and the shout of the sword-bearer that Lord Hereward had come back, and had brought much corn and wine, were heard in almost every part of the house; and, upon hearing them, the monks that were not of the faction grievously lamented what had been done against the Lord Abbat, and in favour of the Normans, and very clearly perceived that a trick had been put upon them in the report of Lord Hereward’s death. “I tell ye now, as I told ye then,” said Father Kynric, “that ye all make too much account of your meat and drink, and are all too impatient of temporary inconvenience. But what said the blessed Etheldreda? ‘The fashion of this world passeth away; and that only is to be accounted life which is purchased by submitting to temporal inconveniences.’” “And tell me,” said that other good old Saxon monk, the Father Celred; “tell me, oh my brethren, tell me how Saint Etheldreda fared when she was in the flesh, and ruled this house as lady abbess?” “Aye,” said good Father Elsin, “Saint Etheldreda never wore linen, but only woollen; she never returned to her bed after matins, which were then begun immediately after midnight; and, except on the great festivals of the church, she ate only once a day, nor cared nor knew whether her bread was white or brown.” “Alack!” said Kenulph of Swaffham, a cloister-monk who had voted for the wicked prior solely because the cellars and the granaries were empty; “alack! man’s flesh is weak, and hunger is so strong! Saint Etheldreda was a woman, and a delicate princess; but, an she had been an upland man like me, and with such a sharp Saxon stomach as I have, she never could have lived upon one meal a day!” “That is to say,” quoth Father Cranewys, “if she had not been sustained by permanent and wondrous miracle, for ye wis, Brother Kenulph, that there be ladie saints in hagiology that have lived for octaves, and for whole moons together, upon nothing but the scent of a rose. I wonder, and would fain know, how much corn and wine the Lord of Brunn hath brought with him.”