Pabo, the Priest: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

It was a delight to observe the last flowers of the year, the few stray harebells that still hung and swayed in the air, the little ivy-leafed campanula by the water, the sturdy red robin, the gorse persistent in bloom. He gathered a few blossoms to adorn his wretched hovel, and in it they were as a smile.

The birds were passing overhead, migrating south, yet the ring-ouzel was still there; the eagle and hawk spired aloft on their lookout for prey; the plover and curlew piped mournfully, and the owl hooted.

The insects were retiring underground for the winter. Pabo had not hitherto noticed the phases of life around him, below that of man, now it broke on him as a wonder, and filled him with interest, to see a world on which hitherto he had not thought to direct his observation. There is no season in the year in which the lights are more varied and more beautiful than in autumn, the slant rays painting the rocks vermilion, glorifying the dying foliage, enhancing the color of every surviving flower.

But the fall of the year is one in which Nature weeps and sighs over the prospect of death; and there came on Pabo days of blinding fog and streaming rain. Then he was condemned to remain within, occasionally looking forth into the whirls of drifting vapor, charged with a strange dank scent, or at the lines of descending water. He milked his goat, collected food for it, and heaped up his fire.

Then it was that sad thoughts came over him, forebodings of ill; and he mused by his hearth, looking into the glow, listening to the moan of the wind or the drizzle of the rain, and the eternal drip, drip from the eaves.

He had thus sat for hours one day, interrupting his meditations only by an occasional pace to the door to look out for a break in the weather, when there came upon him with a shock of surprise the recollection that there was more in the hermit's scroll than he had considered at first. Not much. He unfurled it, and beside the bequest of the hut, only these words were added: "For a commission look below my bed."

What was the meaning of this? It was strange that till now Pabo had given no thought to these concluding words.

Now he thrust the fire together, cast on some dry bunches of gorse that lit the interior with a golden light, and he drew the bed from the place it had occupied in the corner of the chamber.

Beneath it was nothing but the beaten earth that had never been disturbed.

The bed itself was but a plank resting on two short rollers, to sustain it six inches above the soil. Nothing had been concealed beneath the plank, between it and the ground—no box, no roll of parchment. Nothing even was written in the dust.