He bade one of his men ring the bell.
The porter looked forth.
"What manner of men are ye?"
"Travellers lost in the snow come to seek the hospitality prescribed by the rule of St. Benedict."
"Enter," and the portal yawned: no names were asked, no political distinctions recognised.
They stood in the outer quadrangle of the hoar abbey, the stronghold of Christianity in Wessex for five centuries past; and well had it performed its task, and well had it deserved of England. Founded so long ago that its origin was even then lost in conflicting traditions, surviving wave after wave of war, burnt by the Danes, remodelled by the Normans—yet this hoary island of prayer stood in the stream of time unchanged in all its main features, and, as men thought, destined to stand till the archangel's trump sounded the knell of time.
"They built in marble, built as they
Who thought these stones should see the day
When Christ should come; and that these walls
Should stand o'er them when judgment calls."