worship of the faithful, and to bear in mind the seasons of the
liturgical year; and what with carrying up water from the river,
digging in the garden, gathering fagots for his fire, observing his
religious duties, and keeping his thoughts continually upon the
salvation of his soul, the Hermit knew not a moment's idleness.

At first, during his night vigils, he had felt a great fear of the
stars, which seemed to set a cruel watch upon him, as though they
spied out the frailty of his heart and took the measure of his
littleness. But one day a wandering clerk, to whom he chanced to
give a night's shelter, explained to him that, in the opinion of the
most learned doctors of theology, the stars were inhabited by the
spirits of the blessed, and this thought brought great consolation
to the Hermit. Even on winter nights, when the eagle's wings clanged
among the peaks, and he heard the long howl of wolves about the
sheep-cotes in the valley, he no longer felt any fear, but thought
of those sounds as representing the evil voices of the world, and
hugged himself in the solitude of his cave. Sometimes, to keep
himself awake, he composed lauds in honour of Christ and the saints,
and they seemed to him so pleasant that he feared to forget them, so
after much debate with himself he decided to ask a friendly priest
from the valley, who sometimes visited him, to write down the lauds;
and the priest wrote them down on comely sheepskin, which the Hermit
dried and prepared with his own hands. When the Hermit saw them
written down they appeared to him so beautiful that he feared to
commit the sin of vanity if he looked at them too often, so he hid
them between two smooth stones in his cave, and vowed that he would
take them out only once in the year, at Easter, when our Lord has
risen and it is meet that Christians should rejoice. And this vow he
faithfully kept; but, alas, when Easter drew near, he found he was