One long-remembered day in the summer of the year 1259, Martin strolled down the river’s banks, to indulge in meditation and prayer. But the banks were too crowded for him that day. He marked the boats as they came up from Abingdon, drawn by horses, laden with commodities; or shot down the swift stream without such adventitious aid. Pleasure wherries darted about impelled by the young scholars of Oxford, as in these modern days. Fishermen plied their trade or sport. The river was the great highway; no, there was no solitude there. So into the forest which lay between Oxford and Abingdon, now only surviving in Bagley Wood, plunged our novice. As the poet says: Into the forest, darker, deeper, grayer, His lips moving as if in prayer, Walked the monk Martin, all alone: Around him the tops of the forest trees Waving, made the sign of the Cross And muttered their benedicites. The woods were God’s first temples; and even now where does one feel so alone with one’s Maker? How sweet the solemn silence! where the freed spirit, freed from external influences, can hold communion with its heavenly Father. So felt Martin. The very birds seemed to him to be singing carols; and the insects to join, with their hum, the universal hymn of praise. Oh how the serpent lurks in Eden—beneath earthly beauty lies the mystery of pain and suffering. A wail struck on Martin’s ears—the voice of a little child, and soon he brushed aside the branches in the direction of the cry, until he struck upon a faintly trodden path, which led to the cottage of one of the foresters, or as we should say “keepers.” At the gate of the little enclosure, which surrounded the patch of cultivated ground attached to the house, a young child stood weeping. When she saw Martin her eyes lighted up with joy. “Oh, God has sent thee, good brother. Come and help my poor mother. She is so ill,” and she tripped back towards the house; “and father can’t help her, nor brother either. Father lies cold and still, and brother frightens me.” What did it mean? Martin saw it at once—the plague! That terrible oriental disease, probably a malignant form of typhus, bred of foul drainage, and cultivated as if in some satanic hot bed, until it had reached the perfection of its deadly growth, by its transmission from bodily frame to frame. It was terribly infectious, but what then? It had to be faced, and if one died of it, one died doing God’s work—thought Martin. So as Hubert faced his Welshmen, did Martin face his foe—“typhus” or plague, call it which we please. Which required the greater courage, my younger readers? But there was no more faltering in Martin’s step than in Hubert’s, as he went to that pallet in an inner room, where a human being tossed in all the heat of fever, and the incessant cry, “I thirst,” pierced the heart. “So did HE thirst on the Cross,” thought Martin, “and He thirsts again in the suffering members of His mystical body—for in all their affliction He is afflicted.”