forego my pleasures of everyday for any miracles which might be sung of down the ages. Well, well! each man to his own taste! I go to old Aunt Angharad, at Porth Mawr. The blessed woman! she has found me a dainty maid to wife, says she. Now speak me a blessing, David, and let me have your prayers."

"Our Lord God be aiding thee, kinsman Cadfan! May He preserve to thee thy good tenderness of heart!"

"And may He prosper thee, my David! Fare thee well, little kinsman."

Cadfan departed on his way, and David and his companions set their faces northwards. They were not a solitary party. The road swarmed with priests and monks, and was trodden also by many laymen and some few women whom devotion or curiosity drew to the synod of the bishops at Brefi in Ceredigion. As evening drew on, the abbot-bishop of Menevia led his tired followers up the slope of a wooded hill, where he knew were dry caverns to pass the night in, and a spring of water. When they neared their proposed resting-place, a tonsured figure ran out from under the trees, and stood in their path-way, waving his arms.

David whistled to the mongrel greyhound that padded by his side. Then, suddenly, he hastened his steps, his face aglow.

"Padarn! Dear, dear me! My Padarn! Are ye many? Or may we spend this night with thee and thine in this God-given spot?"

"Well met, well met, David!" cried Padarn, "And well met all, ye road-stained travellers! There is surely room for all." He hurried through the thicket to the clearing before the rocky bank which the aforesaid caves perforated, calling out: "Brethren! whom see ye here, whom see ye? Look you, this is David of Mynyw. Teilo, he, and I did journey together to the holy Jerusalem, one in soul, in joy, and in sorrow; and is it not a gladsome thing that he should be here amongst us this night?"

An enthusiastic welcome ensued, and before long David, Teilo, Aidan, Ismail and the rest had been seated by the fire and supplied with food and drink. This was the Age of the Saints. Besides the newcomers there were some dozen holy men, whose names are living yet, sitting about upon the ground, each one bound for the great synod of the Cymric priesthood. In the mouth of the largest cave squatted an elderly man, sallow and wrinkled, with a beak-like nose and weary eyes; he had vellum, pen, and inkhorn, and wrote sedulously, giving himself no respite, with a heavy frown between his brows the while. David knew him for Gildas of Strathclyde, the apostle of Ruys in Lesser Britain.

They yielded early to their fatigue, and lay down where they best might, most of them within the shelter of the caves. Gildas put aside his pen.

"They are all mightily drunken with the use and custom of sins!" he thundered. "If I reckoned without pause for ten years, the scandals concerning the high men of Britain would not be enumerated—and concerning also our monks and ordained priests (Have mercy, have mercy, on us miserable sinners!). Our princes are a host of devils—nay, worse than devils, for have they not received the sign and sacrament of baptism? Lust, and pillage, and oppression are such as were never before since the creation of the world. Stinking to heaven is Gomorrah—I should say Aberffraw! And there dwells the most heinous, the Satan of them all—and that is Maelgwn Gwenedd!"

David yawned, said a prayer for his kinsman Maelgwn, stretched himself, and fell asleep.

At the first glimmer of dawn, they were awakened by the clanging of Gildas's bell. Their prayer said, David went to bathe in the brook near by. When he returned to the camp-fire, Gildas, his countenance sallower than usual, twisting and biting his lips, had just bent down to the simmering pot that hung over the flames, with a loaf of bread in his hand, when the mongrel grey-hound darted up to him, made an ecstatic leap, and snatching the loaf in his teeth, rushed away with it down the hill-side.

David's laugh pealed loud and clear. The holy Gildas turned furiously upon a little boy, one of his pupils, who stood beside him rubbing sleepy eyes, and abused him for not giving his master warning of what he must have seen was likely to occur. The bishop of Mynyw ran as fast as he could after the thief. Some distance below, in the valley, he caught his dog, beat and scolded him, and possessed himself of the bread. In the village at the hill's foot, he admired a cottager's leeks, and was given a handful. He then re-ascended the hill.

"The sour-faced hawk!" thought he. "I am glad, very glad, he did not obtain the rule of Mynwy when he tried to supersede me, long ago!"

Gildas confronted him.

"Ill is thy laughter, Dewi mab Sandde!" he spluttered hoarsely. "For a holy man of God—such conduct is light…."

"Thou hast the black bile, brother," said David. "Laughter is surely given us for good—so are we different from the brute beasts. We must practise austerities for all needful purposes; but I counsel thee that thou endeavour to find joy in all things gay and innocent, and in thine own mishaps, that prove thee human, most of all: so shall such dust-specks not make the sunshine less sweet to thee!" In softer tones, "Lift up thy heart, brother; in a very little while, we shall break our fast. I and my companions will find food enough for us all and to spare."

Gildas, raging inarticulately, rushed into the cave where he had spent the night.

David turned to the contrite boy, whose cheeks showed traces of tears.

"Hast thou seen our Lady's Candle,[9] over yonder by the quarry-side?" said he. "Such altar-light saw I never made by the hand of man. Seek thou it out, for a lovely sight."

"Father David," answered the child, "how may that be? Do they not tell us that we must not gratify our senses, for that this world teems with sin most foul?"

"That is old nonsense!" cried David. "Has not the Lord made all the earth, and is not His Word indwelling? And, son, remember this—come storm, come drought, come frost, nothing can take our God from us."

"Is it true, O my father," asked the boy, wide-eyed, "that once on a time your own cook did try to poison you?"

"The poor mad fellow!" said the bishop shortly. "Luckily one of my guests suspected, and so were we one and all saved alive. Go thou draw water, little one, where the brook is deepest: I have need of more."

David stirred the broth in the pot, adding his leeks and some sage and pepper which he carried about him. The monks had gone their several ways, in search of wild fruits and pot-herbs. From within the biggest cave came the sound of restless fidgeting. David began to sing: