His growing virtues but his crimes confined,
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
Or shut the gates of mercy on mankind."
Still, let it be remembered, that in Stephen's days we see only the worst side of the Norman nobility. In less than a century the barons rallied around that man of God, Stephen Langton, and wrested Magna Charta from the tyrant John, the worst of the Plantagenets. Proud by that time of the name "Englishmen," they laid the foundations of our greatness, and jealously guarded our constitutional liberties; and it was not until after the Wars of the Roses, in which so many of the ancient houses perished, that a Norman baron was said to be "as scarce as a wolf," that the Bloodstained House of Tudor was enabled to trample upon English liberty, and to reign as absolute monarchs over a prostrate commonalty.
All through the summer our boys were very happy, in spite of Evroult's occasional longings for the world. They cultivated a garden hard by their cave, and they gathered the roots and fruits of the forest for their frugal repast. They parched the corn; they boiled the milk and eggs which the rustics spontaneously brought; they made the bread and baked the oatcakes. They were quite vegetarians now, save the milk and eggs; and throve upon their simple fare; but it took, as our readers perceive, a long course of vegetable diet to take the fire out of Evroult.
Then came the fall of the leaf, when the trees, like some vain mortals, put on their richest clothing wherein to die; and damps and mists arose around, driving them within the shelter of their cave; then winter with its chilling frosts, keener then than now, and their stream was turned into ice. And had they not, like the ants, laid by in summer, they would have starved sadly in winter.
In the inner cave was a natural chimney, an orifice communicating with the outer air. Fuel was plentiful in the forest, and as they sat around the fire, Meinhold told them stories of the visible and invisible world, more or less, of course, of a supernatural character, like those we have already heard. His was an imaginary world, full of quaint superstitions which were very harmless, for they left the soul even more reliant and dependent upon Divine help; for was not this a world wherein Angels and demons engaged in terrestrial warfare, man's soul the prize? and were not the rites and Sacraments of the Church sent to counteract the spells and snares of the phantom host?
And as they sat around their fire, the wind made wild and awful music in the subterranean caves: sometimes it shrieked, then moaned, as if under the current of earthly origin there was a perpetual wail of souls in pain.
"Father, may not these passages lead down to Purgatory, or even to the abode of the lost?"
"Nay, my child, I think it only the wind;" but he shuddered as he spoke.