Pabo, the Priest: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

The spot was lonely and beautiful, away from the strife of men and the noise of tongues. The stillness was broken only by the ripple of the water and the hum of the wind in the dried fern. The evening sun lit up the mountain heights, already glorious with dying fern, with an oriole of incomparable splendor.

The great stone slept where it had lodged beside the stream, and was mantled with soft velvet mosses and dappled with many-colored lichen. It was upon its summit, doubtless, that the old Apostle had knelt—not in the bed of the torrent, although the folk insisted on the latter, misled by the hollows worn in the rock.

Pabo, moved by an inward impulse, mounted the block, wrenched, like himself, from its proper place and cast far away, never to return to it. Never to return. That thought filled his mind; he need not attempt to delude himself with hopes. The past was gone forever, with its peace and love and happiness. Peace—broken by the sound of the Norman's steel, happiness departed with it. Love, indeed, might, must remain, but under a new form—no more sweet, but painful, full of apprehensions, full of torture.

Discouragement came over him like the cold dews that were settling in the valley now that the sun was withdrawn. Where the Norman had penetrated thence he would have to depart. The sanctuary had been broken into—and the Angel of Peace, bearing the palm, had spread her wings. He looked aloft: a swan was sailing through the sky, the evening glory turning her silver feathers to gold. Even thus—even thus—leaving the land; but not, like that swan, to return at another season.

Pabo knelt on that stone. He put his hand to his brow; it was wet with cold drops, just as the herbage, as the moss, were being also studded with crystal condensations.

He prayed, turning his eyes to the sunlight that touched the heights of the west; prayed till the ray was withdrawn, and the mountain-head was silvery and no longer golden.

Then, strengthened in spirit, he left the block and resumed his course.

Without telling Howel whither he would betake himself, Pabo had agreed with him on a means of intercommunication in case of emergency. Upon the stone of Cynwyl, Howel was to place one rounded water-worn pebble as a token to flee farther into the depths of the mountains, whereas two stones were to indicate a recall to Caio. In like manner was Pabo to express his wants, should any arise.

The refugee now ascended the steep mountain flank, penetrating farther into the wilderness, till at last he reached some fangs of rock, under which was a rude habitation constructed of stones put together without mortar, the interstices stopped with clay and moss.

It leaned against the rock, which constituted one wall of the habitation, and against which rested the rafters of the roof. A furrow had been cut in the rock, horizontally, so as to intercept the rain that ran down the face and divert it on to the incline of the roof.