“Perhaps not, but, by the cowl of St. Dunstan! he flourishes nevertheless,” responded my saintly entertainer.
“And is this Harold of yours successor to the other Thane, Alfred, whom you describe as taking such a kindly interest in me?”
“Yes; but many generations separate them. It was the great Bretwalda you have mentioned who, tradition says, once found you inanimate, yet living, in a fisherman’s hut where he sheltered one day from a storm, and, struck by the marvel and the tale of the poor folk that their ancestors had long ago dragged you from a swollen river in their nets, and that you slumbered on without alteration or change from year to year, from father to son, there on your dusty shelf in their peat smoke and broken gear, he bought and gave you to the holy Prelate at the blessed Cathedral of Canterbury, whence you came a few months ago into my hands. All else there is to know, my strangely gifted son,” the monk went on, “is locked in the darkness of that long slumber, and such acts of your other life as your vacant mind may recall.”
This seemed a wonderful thing, very briefly told, but it was obviously all there was to hear, and sufficient after a style. The old man said that, having a mind for curiosities, and observing me once in danger of being broken up as rubbish by careless hands, he had claimed me, and brought the strange living mummy here to his cell “on the hill Senlac, by the narrow English straits.”
“That, inscrutable one,” he added with a twinkle in his eye, “was only some months ago, and the mess I made my hut in cleaning and wiping you down was wonderful. Yonder little stream you hear prattling in the valley ran dusty for hours with your washings, and your form was one shapeless bulk of cobwebs and dishonored wrappings. Many a time as I peeled from you the alternate layers of peat smoke and rags with which generations of neglect had shrouded that body, did I think to roll you into the valley as you were, and see what proportions the weather and the crows would make of it. But better counsels prevailed, and for seven days you have been free and daily rubbed with scented oils!”
I thanked him meetly, and hoped I had not been a reluctant patient?
“A more docile never breathed.”
“Not an expensive lodger afterward?”
“Never was there one more frugal, nor one who less criticized his entertainment!”
Then it was the good monk’s turn, and his wise and kindly eyes sparkled with pleasure and astonishment as I told him in gratitude such tales of the early times—drew for him such brilliant, fiery pictures on the dark background of the past—illumined and vivified his dry histories with the colors of my awakening memory, and set all the withered puppets of his chronicles a-dancing in the tinsel and the glitter of their actual lives; until, over the lintel of his doorway and under the lappets of his roof, there came the first thin, fine fingers of the morning sunshine, trickling into our dim arena thronged thus with shadowy imagery, and playing lovingly, about the great silver crucifix that lay thus ablaze under it in the gloom! Then I slept again for two days and two nights as lightly and happily as a child.