d departed, and that a little bird had then
appeared to him and sung so sweetly that he had followed it into the
forest, whence, after a short stay, he had now returned, but found the
abbey so changed that he hardly knew it. On questioning him about his
abbot and the name of the king whom he supposed to be still reigning,
Fulgentius found that both had been dead for three hundred years. The
same tale is told of other monasteries. In Transylvania it is told
concerning a student of the school at Kronstadt that he was to preach on
the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity in St. John's Church, now known as
the Church of the Franciscans, and on the Saturday previous he walked
out on the Kapellenberg to rehearse his sermon. After he had learned it
he saw a beautiful bird, and tried to catch it. It led him on and on
into a cavern, where he met a dwarf, who showed the astonished and
curious student all the wealth of gold and jewels stored up in the
vaults of the mountain. When he escaped again to the upper air the trees
and the houses were altered; other and unknown faces greeted him at the
school; his own room was changed--taken by another; a different rector
ruled; and in short a hundred years had elapsed since he had gone forth
to study his sermon for the next day. The old record-book, bound in
pigskin, reposed on the rector's shelves. He took it down: it contained
an entry of the student's having quitted the school and not returned,
and of the difficulty caused thereby at St. John's Church, where he was
to have preached the following day. By the time the entry was found and
the mystery solved, it was noon. The student was hungry with his
hundred-years' fast; and he sat down with the others at the common table
to dine. But he had no sooner tasted the first spoonful of soup than his
whole frame underwent a change. From a ruddy youth he became an old man
in the last stage of decrepitude. His comrades scarce had time to hurry
him upon a bed ere he breathed his last. Some pretty verses, attributed
to Alaric A. Watts, commemorate a similar incident, said to have
happened to two sisters who were nuns at Beverley Minister. They
disappeared one evening after vespers. After some months they were found
in a trance in the north tower. On being aroused they declared they had
been admitted into Paradise, whither they would return before morning.
They died in the night; and the beautiful monument called the Sisters'
Shrine still witnesses to the