great evil from which you suffer, that you carefully search your
dwellings for idolatry, and extirpate it from them. I think it would be
also efficacious to pray and do penance."

Thus spoke the holy Mael. And the Elders of the Penguin people kissed
his feet and returned to their villages with renewed hope.




VIII. THE DRAGON OF ALCA (Continuation)

Following the counsel of the holy Mael the inhabitants of Alca
endeavoured to uproot the superstitions that had sprung up amongst them.
They took care to prevent the girls from dancing with incantations
round the fairy tree. Young mothers were sternly forbidden to rub their
children against the stones that stood upright in the fields so as
to make them strong. An old man of Dombes who foretold the future by
shaking grains of barley on a sieve, was thrown into a well.

However, each night the monster still raided the poultry-yards and the
cattle-sheds. The frightened peasants barricaded themselves in their
houses. A woman with child who saw the shadow of a dragon on the road
through a window in the moonlight, was so terrified that she was brought
to bed before her time.

In those days of trial, the holy Mael meditated unceasingly on the
nature of dragons and the means of combating them. After six months of
study and prayer he thought he had found what he sought. One evening as
he was walking by the sea with a young monk called Samuel, he to him in