from Britain beyond the seas, came there
as usual on the north wind, with sudden tumult of wings; but went that
year no further, and by Christmas-time had built their nests, filling
that belt of woodland around the vale with the chatter of their
business and love quarrels. In turn they drew after them strangers no
one here had ever known before; the like of which Hyacinth, who knew
his bestiary, had never seen even in a picture. The wild-cat, the
wild-swan--the boy peeped on these wonders as they floated over the
vale, or [158] glided with unwonted confidence over its turf, under the
moonlight, or that frequent continuous aurora which was not the dawn.
Even the modest rivulets of the hill-side felt that influence, and
"lisped" no longer, but babbled as they leapt, like mountain streams,
exposing their rocky bed. Were they angry, as they ran red sometimes
with blood-drops from the stricken bird caught there by rock or bough,
as it fell with rent breast among the waves?

But say, think, what you might against him, the pagan outlaw was worth
his hire as a herdsman; seemingly loved his sheep; was an "affectionate
shepherd"; cured their diseases; brought them easily to the birth, and
if they strayed afar would bring them back tenderly upon his shoulders.
Monastic persons would have seen that image many times before. Yet if
Apollyon looked like the great carved figure over the low doorway of
their place of penitence at home, that could be but an accident, or
perhaps a deceit; so closely akin to those soulless creatures did he
still seem to the wondering Prior,--immersed in, or actually a part of,
that irredeemable natural world he had dreaded so greatly ere he came
hither. And was he after all making terms with it now, in the
seductive person of this mysterious being--man or demon--suspected of
murder; who has an air of unfathomable evil about him as from a distant
but ineffaceable past, and a sort of heathen [159] understanding with
the dark realm of matter; who is bringing the simple people, the women
and lovesick lads, back to those caves and cromlechs and blasted trees,
resorts of old godless secret-telling? And still he has all his own
way with beasts and man, with the Prior himself, much as all alike
distrust him.

Most conspicuous in the little group of buildings, a feudal tower of
goodly white stone, cylindrical and smoothly polished without to hinder
the ascent of creeping things, and snugly plastered within