upon this
green stage of England, the scenery, hill, plain and river even as now,
the actors in much our very selves, in much also so changed in thought
and act that they might be dwellers in another world to ours.

II. HOW THE DEVIL CAME TO WAVERLEY

The day was the first of May, which was the Festival of the Blessed
Apostles Philip and James. The year was the 1,349th from man's
salvation.

From tierce to sext, and then again from sext to nones, Abbot John of
the House of Waverley had been seated in his study while he conducted
the many high duties of his office. All around for many a mile on every
side stretched the fertile and flourishing estate of which he was the
master. In the center lay the broad Abbey buildings, with church and
cloisters, hospitium, chapter-house and frater-house, all buzzing with a
busy life. Through the open window came the low hum of the voices of the
brethren as they walked in pious converse in the ambulatory below.
From across the cloister there rolled the distant rise and fall of a
Gregorian chant, where the precentor was hard at work upon the choir,
while down in the chapter-house sounded the strident voice of Brother
Peter, expounding the rule of Saint Bernard to the novices.

Abbot John rose to stretch his cramped limbs. He looked out at the
greensward of the cloister, and at the graceful line of open Gothic
arches which skirted a covered walk for the brethren within. Two and two
in their black-and-white garb with slow step and heads inclined, they
paced round and round. Several of the more studious had brought their
illuminating work from the scriptorium, and sat in the warm sunshine
with their little platters of pigments and packets of gold-leaf before
them, their shoulders rounded and their faces sunk low over the white
sheets of vellum. There too was the copper-worker with his burin and
graver. Learning and art were not traditions with the Cistercians
as with the parent Order of the Benedictines, and yet the library
of Waverley was well filled both with precious books and with pious
students.

But the true glory of the Cistercian lay in his outdoor work, and so
ever and anon there passed through the cloister some sunburned monk,
soiled mattock or shovel in hand, with his gown looped to his knee,
fresh from the fields or the garden. The lush green water-meadows
speckled with the heavy-fleeced sheep, the acres of corn-land reclaimed
from heather and bracken, the vineyar