Squib and His Friends

by Evelyn Everett-Green

I.

Many long years ago a child dwelt in a quaint old city, and laboured diligently to earn his daily bread. He was fatherless and motherless, and nobody paid much heed to the lonely boy.

Now, hard by that city, just without the walls, stood a great monastery, wherein lived men called monks, who dwelt apart from other men, and thought best to serve God by renouncing those things which men hold dear, and giving themselves to fasting and prayer.

For many hundreds of years men believed that God could best be served so; and some of the monks led very pious and godly lives. The rich and great of the earth called them holy men, and often gave to them great gifts in money or land, to be spent to the glory and honour of God. And when the monks were faithful to their vows, this money entrusted to them was spent either in relieving the necessities of the poor, or in the erection of churches or other buildings to be used for the honour and glory of God.

At the time of which I speak—long, long ago—when the child dwelt in this city, a stately church was being built hard by the monastery walls, and it fell to the lot of the boy to labour with the masons, and to hand them the heavy hodfuls of mortar as they stood upon the scaffolding at their toil.

Day after day they toiled at their work, and the child with them; and, behold, the days grew very long to him, and waxed more and more wearisome. The hodfuls of mortar seemed to become heavier day by day; and when he saw other children passing by, laughing and singing in their play, his heart cried out against the hardness and dreariness of his own life. Instead of looking upwards, and taking pleasure in the progress of the stately building, and his own humble share in the pious work, he was looking ever earthwards, and his heart grew heavy within him.

Now it came to pass that the monks from the monastery hard by came ofttimes to the place where the workmen laboured, and watched the walls of the church rising ever higher and more high, and sometimes worked with their own hands upon some of the beautiful carving in stone or wood with which it was to be adorned; for to these pious men there was no drudgery in work that was done for the honour and glory of God; and they looked forward with longing for the day when the voice of prayer and praise should ascend from these walls, and when men should learn ever more and more of the nearness of His abiding presence in His church.

One of the monks who oftenest came to watch or to work was called Father Gottlieb—and his very name seemed to show something of the nature of the man, for Gottlieb means “the love of God;” and those who looked upon the gentle face, which bore traces of fastings and prayers and vigils, could see that love shone forth from his deep-set eyes, and could hear it in the tones of his beautiful voice.

For Father Gottlieb had a voice that sometimes sounded like a trumpet call; and since he had been dedicated to the service of the Lord from his youth, and had been long resident within the walls of the monastery, the men of the city had come to love and revere him, and even the rough workmen hushed their loud voices, and were ashamed of their idle jests, when they saw the tall form of the monk approaching.

Sometimes as he stood and watched the work, a look of rapture would steal into his eyes, and he would utter words which had a beautiful sound, albeit not all of those who stood by knew what was meant by them.