[Chapter IX]
A liking for stories of the saints grows with the supply. The Bookworm discovered in them the makings of history, and Guy mere love for the marvellous and dramatic situations. He thought St. Agnes would work up splendidly. It is well that saints catch on, because one can't get away from them. No sooner is one out of the parish of St. A., than he's into the parish of St. B., and from St. B. to St. C., and so on through the alphabet. It must have been a sore trial to the aborigines to see so many foreign saints upon the soil without visible means of subsistence, yet claiming exemption from income tax.
Wherever there was a well a saint took possession of it. The votive offerings of the natives to the bright, sparkling divinity dwelling in springs of water passed into their hands, the water cures became "miracles," and chapels and baptistries were built over the wells. Chapels and hermits' cells abound. There is one spring which insures a man from hanging if he is but christened with its water in childhood. There is another, in which a madman may be ducked until he is cured; there is another, in which a maiden may see her "future;" and there are others which can cure sad souls and sadder bodies.
As things are reckoned now, the best of the saints did not have a good time. The ruined chapel in the Saints' Valley was at one time the residence of a holy man, who never saw human form, or heard human voice, unless some one in distress needed his good offices to heal or console the sick or dying. It was a dark and dreary cell, with two slits in the walls for light and air, and a thin stream trickled through, and fell into a rocky basin outside, now green with fern and lichen. This feeble stream cut a channel in the rock, so we thought the cell must be pretty old; but there was no niche, or anything to show that lamp or image swung from the roof, or nestled somewhere to cheer the poor man. Whoever he was, he left no trace, not even a scratch in the rock recording his name. We would not have been much the wiser, after all, even if we had known the name of the poor human who endured torture here, and had the courage to live, and not throw himself to the first wolves who came howling around.
The ideas conjured up were unpleasant, and Guy gave a shout when he got outside, just to be sure that he was himself. He was sure, he said, no penal settlement in the world possessed a solitary system so depressingly solitary as this. He was quite prepared to take an affidavit neither now, nor at any time, to go in for honours in saintship.
The Bookworm said stories of the saints made what we saw much more interesting than if we merely looked at them through the eyes of guide-books. There was the "Cheese-wring." What did Murray say? Just this—
"This remarkable object consists of tabular blocks of granite heaped one upon the other, after the manner of cheeses, to the height of twenty-four feet, but has probably acquired its name from its supposed resemblance to the press employed in the preparation of cider.... It derives its extraordinary appearance from the circumstance of the stones at the base being less than half the size of those they support, which are ten or twelve feet in diameter. Hence, the shape of the pile is that of a huge fungus, with a stalk so slenderly proportioned for the weight of the head, that the spectator will find it hard to divest himself of the idea of its instability."