he good things of this world
have not been denied him. And in this I rejoice, for when he hath won
all his heart may desire, he will the sooner discover how little is the
joy and how fleeting the content. And tell him that so long as I am
Prior of this house, so long shall this house be a home waiting for his
home-coming. Bid him come to me--if but for a little while, then for a
little while be it; but if he longs for rest, this shall be the place
of his rest until the end. And if these things cannot be now, then let
them be when they may be."

And Bede went on his long wayfaring and found the Lost Brother, a man
happy and of fair fame, and blessed with wife and child. And the monk
sat with the little maid on his knee, and even while he prayed for her
and her father, he understood how it might be that the man was well
content, and how that neither to-day nor to-morrow could he return to
that old life of the Priory in the forest.

"Yet," said he, "tell the Prior that surely some day I shall see his
face again, if it be but for mere love of him for well I know there be
among the monks those who would more joyfully rend me or burn me at the
stake than give the hand of fellowship to one who has cast aside the
cowl."

When he heard of these things the Prior only prayed the more earnestly
for the home-coming of his friend.

Now it was in the autumn of that year, at the season when the days and
nights are of one length, that the great inroad of the sea befell. The
day had been stormy, with a brackish wind clamouring out of the sea,
and as the darkness closed in it was with us as it is with blind men
who hear and feel the more keenly because of their blindness and all
that we heard was the boom of billows breaking on the long shore and
the crying and groaning of the old oaks and high firs in the forest.
Then in the midmost of the night we were aroused by so terrible a
noise, mingled with shrieking and wailing, that we crowded to the
Prior's door. Speedily he rose, and we followed him out of doors,
wondering what disaster had happened. The moon was shining brightly;
shreds of cloud were flying across the cold sky; the air was full of
the taste of salt.

As we gazed about us we saw that the cloisters and the garth and all
the space within the walls were crowded with wild birds--sea-fowl and
crows, pheasant and blackcock, starlings and thrushes, stonechats and
yellow-hammers, and hundreds of small winged creatures