From this place where he sat he could see a valley of wet meadow-land, in
the midst of which gray stone buildings were massed inside a wall which
enclosed also the garden and the cloisters. He knew that this was an
abbey.

Years before a company of twelve monks and a Prior had come there to found
a religious house. They brought from England an arklike chest containing
some manuscript books, and relics, chalices, candlesticks and other
treasures, and little else except their long black robes, girdles and
sandals. These monks, working in orderly and diligent fashion under their
superior's direction, had built a chapel, a dormitory, a dining-hall,
store-houses, barns,--and the community grew. The building was done first
of rough stone and wattle-work after the manner of the country, but later
of good cut stone. Half the countryside had been employed there when the
chapel was building. They had drained the marsh for their meadow-land,
their young trees were growing finely, their vineyard was thriving in a
sunny selected nook, their sheep flecked the hills all about them. A deep
fish-pond had been made where now two monks sat fishing. Padraig wondered
if they had caught anything as good as the lithe trout he had taken from a
mountain stream.

He was hungry, for he had been afoot since daylight, and he was wondering
whether to make a fire and cook his trout or offer them to the monks in
exchange for a supper. The wind that blew from the eight-side cone-roofed
kitchen brought to his nostrils a smell so delicious that he was drawn
like a fish on a line to the gates of the abbey.

He had met wandering monks and friars, but this was the first abbey he had
entered. When he knocked at the gate and the porter asked him what he
wanted, he was a little excited and rather scared.