"Our Father" once again, because it is the prayer that Christ Our Lord specially told His friends to use.

The nine o'clock gun booms out across the Solent as the Cubs and Akela, having bidden good-night to Father and Mother and Godmother, walk down the hill to the Stable. The sea looks like a great piece of shimmering grey silk. "Look at the little twinkle lights!" says a Cub. It is the street lamps over on the mainland, but they look like so many winking diamonds. There is quite a cluster of them on the grey ghost of a battleship, and the old, round fort has a light which looks like the red end of a cigar. "Please, please let us go down to the front and look at the little twinkling lights," beg the Cubs. So, on condition they get undressed in five minutes, Akela says "Yes."

A few minutes later the Stable and the Coach-house are having an undressing race. One of the two tiny rooms has been made into a little chapel. In less than two minutes the first Cub ready whisks once round the yard in his night-shirt, like a white moth in the dusk, and into the chapel to say his prayers. The door stands open. In the red light of the tiny lamp you can see the little white form kneeling on the floor, very quiet and devout. Presently he is silently joined by another—there is only room for two, it is such a wee chapel. Several impatient people in pyjamas think it would be fun to start jazzing in the courtyard, till Akela warns them, "No story if you start ragging."

Soon all prayers are said, and the people in the Coach-house are in bed, and ready to "invite" the Stable. The Stable having been duly invited, its eight occupants come in, and each finds a place on a palliasse. It is a warm, still night. The great doors of the Coach-house stand wide open. The stars are out thick by this time. Little black bats flit and swoop about in the darkness. If you keep very still you can just hear the gentle "hshshsh, hshshsh" of the sea. The candle flickers as the night gives a little sigh. A few Cubs are rolling about on their straw beds. "Shut up, all!" commands an imperious Sixer. "Now, miss, go ahead."

Akela is sitting on a palliasse already occupied by two people. Silence reigns, for these Cubs belong to a story-telling Pack, and it is almost the only time they are ever quite quiet. "Well," begins Akela, "many hundreds of years ago there lived a boy——"

The Story of St. Benedict.

Many hundreds of years ago there lived a boy called Benedict. He lived in Italy. His father and mother were rich people, and lived in a beautiful house on a beautiful estate. St. Benedict and his twin sister must have been very happy playing among the olive-trees and vines of sunny Italy, where the sky is nearly always blue, and where there are all sorts of lovely wild-flowers and fruits we don't get in England, and lizards and butterflies and all sorts of things.

St. Benedict was brought up a good Christian, though lots of the people round were still pagans in those days. There were terrible wars and troubles going on in Italy and in all the countries round, like there have been in our days. But the boy Benedict in his happy home knew little of these. Little did he know that the beautiful fields of Italy were being left to be overgrown with weeds and over-run with wild beasts; that the children had never heard of God; that the poor were dying of starvation. To him the world was a happy place, where one played and had a good time, and where people loved Christ and obeyed His words. But some day he was to learn the truth. For God was going to use the boy Benedict to do more than any one man has ever done to civilize the world. This story I'm telling you is the story of how St. Benedict discovered all God's great plan for him, and worked it out, bit by bit.

When St. Benedict had learnt all that his tutors could teach him at home his father sent him to the great city of Rome to learn there from the scholars and learned men, and attend lectures and classes. St. Benedict was a very clever boy, and he must have got on very quickly and pleased his masters very much. He could probably have carried off all sorts of prizes and won great fame and praise for himself, but there was something which stopped him caring for things like that. In the great city of Rome he saw two things—one of them was all sorts of wicked, selfish, horrible, and ungodly pleasures in which men wasted their lives and altogether forgot God; and the other was the beautiful, holy lives of the Christians, many of whom could tell wonderful stories of the martyrs who had been killed in Rome not so very long before, and whose bodies lay in the Catacombs. There were some beautiful churches in the city, and St. Benedict loved to go to the solemn services. As he knelt there in the holy stillness, or listened to the chanting, he began to think. And more and more he felt that all the glamour and selfish pleasures and greediness of the people was stupid and wrong, and that what was really worth having was a good conscience, and peace, and the friendship of God. And as he thought, he began to care less and less for his learning and his chances of glory, and he began to feel as if he wanted to get right away from people and have the chance of thinking about God.

When St. Benedict had these feelings he knew they came from God, and so, instead of not listening and just letting himself get keen on his study and his amusements, he made up his mind that he would always do his best to follow God's will, and would keep his heart always listening, so that if God did want to call him away to some special kind of life he would be ready to hear and to obey.

Well, when anybody does this God does not fail to tell him what to do, and so, when St. Benedict had been seven years in Rome, and was still only a boy, God made known to him that he must leave Rome, and his friends and his masters, and go right away into the mountains. His old nurse, Cyrilla, had always stayed with him, faithfully; and now she decided to go with him wherever it was that God was leading him.

So, one day, St. Benedict and Cyrilla set out secretly, and made their way by hidden paths towards the mountains. At last they reached a certain village, and St. Benedict went into the church to pray God to make known His will. When he came out the peasants who lived near the church pressed him to stay with them. St. Benedict took their kindness as a sign that it was God's will, so he and his old nurse settled down in the village.

It was while the boy was living here that (so the old books tell us) a miracle happened which made people feel sure that God was specially pleased with him. One day, as St. Benedict returned home from the church where he had been praying, he found his old nurse very unhappy; in fact, she was crying. This distressed him very much, because he hated to see other people miserable. At first he wondered why Cyrilla was crying, and then he saw the cause. She had accidentally broken an earthenware bowl that one of the good villagers had lent her. Full of pity for his old friend, St. Benedict took up the two pieces and went outside the house with them, and knelt down. Then he prayed very hard that the bowl might be mended. And, as he opened his eyes and looked at it, sure enough, it was whole! Very pleased, and thinking how good God is to those who really trust Him, he ran into the house and gave it to Cyrilla.

St. Benedict had not thought of himself, but only of God's wonderful power and kindness. But Cyrilla and the village people to whom she told the miracle all began to talk a lot about St. Benedict, and say he was a young saint, since he could do miracles. People even came in from the places round to stare at him. Do you think this pleased him? No;