The old man bent down and kissed their sores.
"I see Christ in you; come to my humble cell—there you shall have food, fire, and shelter."
He helped them to ascend the rocky side of the valley, until they came to a natural cave half concealed by herbage—an artificial front had been built of stone, with door and window; a spring of water bubbled down the rock, to find its destination in the brook below. Far over the forest they could see a river, red in the light of the setting sun, and the buildings of a town of some size in the dim distance. The river, although they knew it not, was the Cherwell, the town, Banbury.
He led them and seated them by a fire, gave them food, then, after he had heard their tale—
"My dear children," he said, "if you dread the lazar-house so much, ye may stay with me while ye will; go not forth again into the cruel, cruel world, poor wounded lambs."
And the good man put them to bed upon moss and leaves.
FOOTNOTE:
[16] Too true. Bad sanitary arrangements causing constant plague and fever, ignorance of medicine, frequent famines, the constant casualties of war, had brought men to think fifty years a ripe old age in the twelfth century.