Dunstan noticed that his whole party crowded closely together, and when the lightning illuminated each face saw that fear had left its visible mark.
The continuous roar of thunder, the hissing of the descending rain, the wind which blew in angry gusts, prevented all conversation until nearly an hour had elapsed, when the strife began to diminish. It was a sad and mournful sight to gaze upon the remains of departed greatness when thus illuminated by the electric flash, and easily might the fancy, deceived by the transient glimpses of things, people the ruins with the shades of their departed inhabitants.
“Father,” said Alfred, at length, “who were they who lived here? Do you know aught about them?”
“The men whom our ancestors subdued—the Welsh, or British—an unhappy race.”
“Were they heathen?”
“At one time, but they were converted by the missions from Rome and the East, of which the earliest was that of St. Joseph of Arimathea to our own Glastonbury; he may have preached to the very people who lived here, nay, in this very basilica, which, I think, may have been converted into a church.”
It was indeed the ruin of a basilica wherein they stood, but no trace survived to show whether Dunstan’s conjecture was correct.
“It seems strange that God should have permitted them to fall before the sword of our heathen ancestors.”
“Their own historian Gildas, who lies buried at Glastonbury, explains it. He tells us that such was the corruption of faith and of morals towards the close of their brief day, that had not the Saxon sword interposed; plague, pestilence, or famine, or some similar calamity, must have done the fatal work. God grant that we, now that in turn we have received the message of the Gospel, may be more faithful servants, or similar ruin may, at no distant period, await the Englishman also, as it did the Welshman.”
He sighed deeply, and Alfred echoed the sigh in his heart; he read the abbot’s thoughts.