[51] If the Lord Himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say: if the Lord Himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us; &c. (_Psalm_ cxxiv.) [52] In those days this was a common invocation. S. Martin was a favourite saint in England: it shews the tendency of language to become the vehicle of lower ideas, that this invocation of S. Martin was corrupted into “O my eye and Betty Martin” in Protestant days. CHAPTER XIII. _THE TRUST FULFILLED._ Once more at the midnight hour Cuthbert sought the Abbey precincts; the night was bright--it was almost as light as day, the moon was at the full. But all the town was buried in sleep; not a watch dog barked--not a watchman stirred--alone, unobserved, Cuthbert walked along the streets. The chief entrance into the Abbey was from S. Mary Magdalene Street, which lay on the west of the ruined pile; it led to the Chapel of S. Joseph, and through that chapel, eastward, one passed into the nave of the great church. When Cuthbert approached, he saw the entrance yawning wide, like a cavern, for the gates had been sold for the value of the wood;[53] and he entered into the desecrated chapel, which so many generations had revered as the very sanctuary of Avalon, the holy place, as men said, trodden of old, by the saintly feet of him of Arimathæa. On the right was the porter’s cell, but where, alas, was the porter? he had been driven to beggary, and in accordance with the vagrant laws drawn up by Henry himself, had been stripped naked from the waist upward, tied to the end of a cart, and beaten with whips through the town, “till his body was bloody by reason of such whipping.”[54] He had not dared to beg again so he simply starved, and made his moan to the God of Heaven, died and received a pauper’s funeral, let us hope to be carried like a beggar of old, “by angels into Abraham’s bosom.” His fate was perhaps milder than the fate of many of his brethren, who unable to find work, and unwilling to starve, had repeated their offence, had been brutally mutilated on the second occasion, and, on the third, hung, as felons and enemies of the commonwealth. Cuthbert drank sadly of the holy well and plucked a sprig of the thorn, ere he entered the nave of the church. What a sight then met his view! The defaced tomb stones, broken altars, empty niches, all stood out in brilliant relief as the chill moon looked down upon them, that November night; “Ichabod--the glory is departed” might well have been inscribed on that ruined fane. It was as large as most of our cathedrals, for the extreme length of the building, from S. Joseph’s Chapel at the west, to the Ladye Chapel at the east, was no less than five hundred and eighty feet, and there were two deep transepts, on the east of each of which, were also two chapels.