red at this moment, and Dunstan talked
apart with him for some moments with extreme earnestness, but only the
last words which passed between them were audible.

"Yes, my brother, you have the words of Scripture," said Dunstan, "to
support your proposal: 'When they persecute you in one city, flee ye
unto another.'"

"Yet it is hard to leave a spot one has reared with such tender care."

"There was One Who left more for us; and I do not think they will
destroy the place, or even attempt to destroy it: they will fill it with
those 'slow bellies, those evil beasts,' the secular clergy, with their
wives."

"Fitter it should be a stye for hogs." [xxi]

"Nay, they are men after all; yet there is some reason to fear that,
like hogs, they wallow in the mire of sensuality; but their day will be
but a short one."

"My father!"

"But a short one; it hath been foreshown me in visions of the night that
the Evil One will triumph indeed, but that his triumph will be very
short; and, alas a green tree which standeth in the pride of its youth
and might must, ere the close of that triumph, be hewn down."

"By our hands, father?"

"God forbid! by the Hand of God, I speak but as it has been revealed to me."

It was a well-known fact that Dunstan either was subject to marvellous
hallucinations, and was a monomaniac on that one point, while so wise in
all other matters, or that he was the object of special revelations, and
was favoured with spiritual visions, as well as temptations, which do
not ordinarily fall within the observation or experience of men.

So Father Guthlac and the rest of the company listened with the greatest
reverence to his declaration, as to the words of an inspired oracle.

"But let us go to our brethren; they await us," said Dunstan, speaking
to the prior. "Brother Osgood, take these our guests to the
refectorarius, and ask him to see that they and all their company taste
our bounty at least this day; tomorrow we may have nought to offer them."

In the famous chapter of the whole house of Glastonbury which followed,
and which became historical, prompt resolution was taken on Dunstan's
report, which did honour to the brotherhood, as evincing both their
resignation and their trust in God, Who they believed would, to use the
touching phrase of the Psalmist, "turn their captivity as the rivers in
the south;" so that they "who went forth weeping, bearing good seed,
should come again with joy, and bring their