nes with whom they had broken meat, even to the women and
the little children; and the blood of the people of Haafager cried with a
loud voice at the Abbey door, through the long night it cried, saying:--

"I trusted in your spoken word. I broke meat with you. I put my faith
in you and in your God. I passed beneath the shadow of your cross to
enter your doors. Let your God make answer!"

Nor was there silence till the dawn.

Then the Abbot rose from where he knelt and called to God, saying:--

"Thou hast heard, O God. Make answer."

And there came a great sound from the sea as though a tongue had been
given to the deep, so that the monks fell upon their knees in fear; but
the Abbot answered:--

"It is the voice of God speaking through the waters. He hath made
answer."

And that winter a mighty storm arose, the like of which no man had known
before; for the sea was piled upon the dry land until the highest tower
of the town of seven towers was not more high; and the waters moved
forward over the dry land. And the men of the town of seven towers fled
from the oncoming of the waters, but the waters overtook them so that not
one of them escaped. And the town of the seven towers and of the four
churches, and of the many streets and quays, was buried underneath the
waters, and the feet of the waters still moved till they came to the hill
whereon the Abbey stood. Then the Abbot prayed to God that the waters
might be stayed, and God heard, and the sea came no farther.

And that this tale is true, and not a fable made by the weavers of words,
he who doubts may know from the fisher-folk, who to-day ply their calling
amongst the reefs and sandbanks of that lonely coast. For there are
those among them who, peering from the bows of their small craft, have
seen far down beneath their keels a city of strange streets and many
quays. But as to this, I, who repeat these things to you, cannot speak
of my own knowledge, for this city of the sea is only visible when a rare
wind, blowing from the north, sweeps the shadows from the waves; and
though on many a sunny day I have drifted where its seven towers should
once have stood, yet for me that wind has never blown, pushing back the
curtains of the sea, and, therefore, I have strained my eyes in vain.

But this I do know, that the rumbling stones of that ancient Abbey,
between which and the foam fringe of the ocean the town of seven towers
once lay, now stand upon a wave-