Hither, for the love of God, came Meinhold. He had found the place he desired—a shelter from the storms of Heaven. In the outer cave he placed a rude table and seat, which he made for himself; and in an inner cavern he made a bed of flags and leaves.
In the corner of the cell he placed his crucifix. Wandering in the woods he found the skeleton of some poor hapless wayfarer, long since denuded of its flesh. He placed the skull beneath the crucifix as a memento mori, not without breathing a prayer for the poor soul to whom it had once belonged.
Here he read his Breviary, which, let the reader remember, was mainly taken from the Word of God, psalms and lessons forming three-fourths of the contents of the book, arranged, as in our Prayer Book, for the Christian year. It was his sole possession,—a bequest of a deceased friend, worth its weight in gold in the book market, but far more valuable in Meinhold's eyes.
Here, then, he passed a blameless if monotonous existence, to which but one objection could be made—it was a selfish life. Even if the selfishness were of a high order, man was not sent into the world simply to save, each one, his own soul. The life of the Chaplain at Byfield lazar-house showed how men could abjure self far more truly than in a hermitage.
Sometimes thoughts of this kind passed through the mind of our hermit and drove him distracted, until his cry became,
"Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"
And while he thus sought to know God's Will, the two poor fugitives, Evroult and Richard, came into his way.
Poor wounded lambs! no fear had he of their terrible malady. The Lord had sent them to him, and the hermit felt his prayers were answered. Wearied out and tired by their long day's journey, the poor boys passively accepted his hospitality; and they ate of his simple fare, and slept on his bed of leaves as if it had been a couch of down; nor did they awake till the sun was high in the heavens.
The hermit had been up since sunrise. He had long since said his Matins and Lauds from his well-thumbed book; and then kindling a fire in a sort of natural hearth beneath a hole in the rock, which opened to the upper air, he roasted some oatmeal cakes, and went out to gather blackberries and nuts, as a sort of dessert after meat, for the boys. It was all he had to offer.
At last they awoke.