hermitage and the well, but he distributed among the donors alms far
more profitable than their gifts. He entered no village, borne upon an
ass laden with twin sacks, for the purpose of sanctimoniously robbing
the inhabitants; no profane songs were ever heard resounding from his
dwelling by the peasant incautiously lingering at a late hour too
near its vicinity; my guide, the monk, complained bitterly of his
unsociability, and no scandalous legend of nymph-like comforters and
damsel visitants haunting the sacred dwelling escaped from the garrulous
friar's well-loaded budget.

"Does he study much?" said I, with the interest of a student.

"I fear me not," quoth the monk. "I have had occasion often to enter his
abode, and I have examined all things with a close eye,--for, praised
be the Lord, I have faculties more than ordinarily clear and
observant,--but I have seen no books therein, excepting a missal, and
a Latin or Greek Testament, I know not well which; nay, so incurious or
unlearned is the holy man that he rejected even a loan of the 'Life of
Saint Francis,' notwithstanding it has many and rare pictures, to say
nothing of its most interesting and amazing tales."

More might the monk have said, had we not now suddenly entered a thick
and sombre wood. A path cut through it was narrow, and only capable of
admitting a traveller on foot or horseback; and the boughs overhead were
so darkly interlaced that the light scarcely, and only in broken and
erratic glimmerings, pierced the canopy.

"It is the wood," said the monk, crossing himself, "wherein the
wonderful adventure happened to Saint Francis, which I will one day
narrate at length to you."

"And we are near the well, I suppose?" said I.

"It is close at hand," answered the monk.

In effect we had not proceeded above fifty yards before the path brought
us into a circular space of green sod, in the midst of which was a small
square stone building, of plain but not inelegant shape, and evidently
of great antiquity. At one side of this building was an iron handle, for
the purpose of raising water, that cast itself into a stone basin,
to which was affixed by a strong chain an iron cup. An inscription in
monkish Latin was engraved over the basin, requesting the traveller to
pause and drink, and importing that what that water was to the body,
faith was to the soul; near the cistern was a rude seat, formed by the
trunk of a tree. The door of the well-house was of iro