raises like any bird and sat for hours thinking holy thoughts. Before
the door he hung an ox-hide, and this was his only protection from the
winds of the sea. He found a spring in the rock and this supplied him
with water; and he planted a plot of barley which yielded him food.

Thus he lived, alone with the birds which swarmed about the rock. The
winds swept over him and the waves curled and broke almost at the door
of his hut, but he did not care. Indeed, the sea was a rough friend to
him. Once when by mistake it came too near and washed away part of the
cottage, Cuthbert sent to his brother monks on the mainland, asking them
to bring him a beam to prop up the roof, for there was no wood on his
rocky isle. But this the brothers forgot to do. The sea, however, seemed
sorry for having been so careless, and at the next high tide it washed
up at the Saint's feet the beam he wished.

He did not lack for friends. For, as soon as he made this island rock
his home, it became the haunt of every kind of bird. The other animals
could not reach him from the shore, poor things. But the blessed wings
of the gulls and curlews, the eider-ducks and the ravens, bore them to
their Master in his retreat.

"Hi!" they said to one another, "we have got him to ourselves now. Those
poor, featherless creatures can't come here, neither can he get away,
without wings. He is all our own now!"

This was not quite true, for they forgot that though men cannot fly they
make boats with wings, and so can cross the sea. Cuthbert often went
ashore to do errands of mercy, in peasants' huts and in the Queen's
palace. And many people came to see him also, because his fame had
spread over the kingdom. He made them welcome to the house which he had
built for his guests as far as possible from his own solitary cell. He
loved them, and helped them when he could. But after all, the birds
were his dearest friends, and he liked best to be alone with them.

They would come and sit upon his shoulders and knees and let him take
them up and caress them. They followed him in flocks when he went to
walk. They watched at the door of his hut and ate breakfast, dinner, and
supper with him. Many people believed that every day the birds brought
him food from Paradise, but this story arose, as so many false stories
do, from another thing that really happened. For once when some
blackbirds thoughtlessly stole his barley and some of the straw from his
roof, Cuthbert scolded