child, he was loved by the people in all the
country around. For he had the great gift of sympathy. In those years
while he had lived under the kind, hot sun his heart had grown mellow
and soft like a ripe apple.

Many of the people in the far-off hills and lonely Scotch moorlands were
like savages, wild and timid, hating every stranger. But the hearts of
these poor children of the heather warmed to the big brother who came
among them with love shining in his eyes and a desire to help them. He
used to trudge into the wildest, most distant places to reach them, to
teach and comfort them. He was always carrying food and clothing to the
poor and medicine to the sick, for he could not bear to see others
suffer. But he was not afraid of suffering himself.

One thing Cuthbert used to do which showed how strong and healthy he
was. Even until he grew to be quite an old man he used to take a bath in
the sea every day of his life. No matter how cold it was he would plunge
into the waves and come out all dripping upon the frozen beach, where he
would always kneel and say a little prayer before going home.

One bitter night in winter as Cuthbert knelt thus in the snow after his
plunge, blue with cold, two brown otters came up out of the sea and
stole to Cuthbert's side. And as he prayed, not noticing them at all,
they licked his poor frozen feet, trying to warm them, and rubbed
against him with their thick, soft fur till he was dry again. Thus the
water-creatures did their little best for him who loved them and who had
done so much for others.

When the Abbot Boswell died Cuthbert became head of the Abbey in his
place. But after twelve years of living indoors with the other monks he
could bear it no longer. For he longed to get out into the fresh air and
under the sky once more. He resolved to become a hermit, and to live a
wild outdoor life with the birds whom he loved.

He built his nest on a wild little island named Farne, a steep, rocky
sea-mountain where ten or fifteen years before had lived that same holy
Aidan whose passage to heaven he had witnessed when he was a shepherd
boy at Melrose. The nest was really a hole in the ground--you know some
birds build so. He dug himself a round cell in the rock, the roof
having a window open to his dear sky. The walls were of turf and stone
and it was thatched with straw. There were two rooms, one where he lived
and slept and cooked; the other for his little chapel, where he sang
p