in
pilgrimage to the spot, and costly gifts--gold and silver and jewels,
sheep and cattle, wine and corn, and even charters of large demesnes,
fruitful fields and woods and waters--were bestowed as thank-offerings
to the saintly man.

Then over his tomb rose a vast and beautiful minster, and the tomb
itself was covered with a shrine, brilliant with blue and vermilion and
gold and sculptured flowers, and guarded by angels with outspreading
wings.

At the beginning Abbot Samson was well pleased, for the great church
rose like a dream of heaven, but when he perceived that the constant
concourse of people was destroying the hushed contemplation and piety
of the house, and that the brethren were distracted with eagerness for
gain and luxury and the pride of life, he resolved to make an end.
Wherefore after High Mass on the Feast of All Saints he bade the
religious walk in procession to the splendid shrine, and there the
Abbot, with the shepherd's staff of rule in his hand, struck thrice on
the stone coffin, and three times he called aloud: "Spiridion!
Spiridion! Spiridion!" and begged him, as he had been founder and
first father of that monastery, to listen to the grievance which had
befallen them in consequence of the miracles he had wrought from his
grave.

And after an indignant recital of their loss of humility, of their
lukewarmness, of their desire for excitement and the pageants of the
world, of their lust for buildings of stone and pillared walks and
plentiful living, he concluded: "Make, then, we beseech thee, no sign
from thy sepulchre. Let life and death, and joy and sorrow, and
blindness and disease, and all the vicissitudes of this world follow
their natural courses. Do not thou, out of compassion for thy
fellow-man, interpose in the lawful succession of things. This is what
we ask of thee, expecting it of thy love. But if it be that thou deny
us, solemnly we declare unto thee, by the obedience which once we owed
thee, we shall unearth thy bones and cast them forth from amongst us."

Now whether it was that for some high purpose God delayed the answer to
that prayer, or whether it was the folly and superstition of men which
gave to things natural the likeness of the miraculous, and even
peradventure the folk lied out of a mistaken zeal for the glory of the
saints, there was no abatement of the wonders wrought at Spiridion's
tomb; and when the Abbot would have forbidden access to the vast crowds
of pi