The old knight only survived his return a few months, and for the sake of offering a home to the poor houseless Benedictines whom he gathered round him, Father Ambrose accepted the facts of his position, and became, without question, Sir Walter Trevannion of Becky Hall, and the protector of Cuthbert, to whom he had conceived so great an attachment (which the lad well deserved) that he adopted him as his son, whereas his first intention had been to place him in a more subordinate position until he should shew himself worthy of higher promotion.
Thus to the outward world he was the country knight, but when the gates were shut and he was alone with his brethren, he was Prior Ambrose.
Thus six uneventful years—uneventful, that is, to them—had passed away, in the quietude of their moorland home, beneath the shade of the mighty hills, far from the scenes of political strife.
And there Cuthbert’s education had been completed; when we reintroduced him to our readers he was already in the bloom of early manhood.
“Happy the people, who have no history,” says an old well-worn proverb; for history is only interesting when it deals with those days of war and excitement which were miserable to contemporaries, but lend a charm to tradition: “nothing in the papers to-day,” say we moderns, almost vexed that no train has run off the lines, no steam-boat exploded, no murderer exercised his art, to fill the columns.
Similarly those six years of Cuthbert’s past life would have no interest for the reader, but they had been happy ones to him—
“The torrent’s smoothness ere it dash below.”
And often in later years did he recall them with regret.
And although he and his adopted father knew it not, another period of deep excitement and great trial lay before them, upon the eve of which we draw up our curtain and arrange our dramatis personæ.