And he retraced
His pathway homeward sadly and in haste.
When the monk returns to the convent, every thing is changed. He finds himself a stranger among the brotherhood.
“Forty years,” said a Friar,
“Have I been Prior
Of this convent in the wood;
But for that space
Never have I beheld thy face.”
At last the oldest recluse of the cloister recollects his name as that of a monk, who, a hundred years before, had left the convent, and never returned.
And they knew, at last,