So those three went into the wild forest. And 'for three days they saw nought but earth and sky and mighty trees. And they went on, praying Christ that He would guide their feet into the way of peace. And on the third day they came to the place which is called Hersfelt (the hart's down?), and searched it round, and prayed that Christ would bless the place for them to dwell in; and then they built themselves little huts of beech-bark, and abode there many days, serving God with holy fastings, and watchings, and prayers.' Is it not a strange story? so utterly unlike anything which we see now;--so utterly unlike anything which we ought to see now? And yet it may have been good in its time. It looks out on us from the dim ages, like the fossil bone of some old monster cropping out of a quarry. But the old monster was good in his place and time. God made him and had need of him. It may be that God made those three poor monks, and had need of them likewise. As for their purposes being superstitious, we shall be better able to judge of that when we have seen what they were--what sort of a house they meant to build to God. As for their having self-interest in view, no doubt they thought that they should benefit their own souls in this life, and in the life to come. But one would hardly blame them for that, surely? One would not blame them as selfish and sordid if they had gone out on a commercial speculation? Why, then, if on a religious one? The merchant adventurer is often a noble type of man, and one to whom the world owes much, though his hands are not always clean, nor his eye single. The monk adventurer of the middle age is, perhaps, a still nobler type of man, and one to whom the world owes more, though his eye, too, was not always single, nor his hands clean.