But we must return to Wallingford Castle again, and the active life of the fighting world of King Stephen's days. Suffice it for the present to say, that the lives of the hermit and his two pupils, for such they were, continued to roll on uneventfully for many months—indeed, until the occurrence of totally unexpected events, which we shall narrate in due course.
CHAPTER XXI A DEATHBED DISCLOSURE
An excessive rainfall during the late summer of this year destroyed the hopes of the harvest,—such hopes as there were, for tillage had been abandoned, save where the protection of some powerful baron gave a fair probability of gathering in the crops. In consequence a dreadful famine succeeded during the winter, aggravated by the intense cold, for a frost set in at the beginning of December and lasted without intermission till February, so that the Thames was again frozen, and the ordinary passage of man and horse was on the ice of the river.
The poor people, says the author of The Acts of King Stephen, died in heaps, and so escaped the miseries of this sinful world,—a phrase of more meaning then, in people's ears, than it is now, when life is doubtless better worth living than it could have been then, in King Stephen's days, when horrible and unexampled atrocities disgraced the nation daily, and the misery of the poor was caused by the cruel tyranny of the rich and powerful.
All this time our young friend Osric continued to be the favourite squire of Brian Fitz-Count, and, we grieve to say, became habituated to crime and violence. He no longer shuddered as of yore at the atrocities committed in the dungeons of the castle, or in the constant raids: the conscience soon became blunted, and he felt an ever-increasing delight in strife and bloodshed, the joy of the combat, and in deeds of valour.
Facilis descensus averno, wrote the poet, or, as it has been Englished—
"The gate of Hell stands open night and day,