the cold of the mountains, and anger the Lord with a wilful
martyrdom.'

'Come to the fire,' said the abbot, 'and warm yourself, and eat the
food the boy Olioll will bring you. It is sad indeed that any for
whom Christ has died should be as poor as you.'

The man sat over the fire, and Olioll took away his now dripping
cloak and laid meat and bread and wine before him; but he would eat
only of the bread, and he put away the wine, asking for water. When
his beard and hair had begun to dry a little and his limbs had ceased
to shiver with the cold, he spoke again.

'O blessed abbot, have pity on the poor, have pity on a beggar who
has trodden the bare world this many a year, and give me some labour
to do, the hardest there is, for I am the poorest of God's poor.'

Then the Brothers discussed together what work they could put him to,
and at first to little purpose, for there was no labour that had not
found its labourer in that busy community; but at last one remembered
that Brother Bald Fox, whose business it was to turn the great quern
in the quern-house, for he was too stupid for anything else, was
getting old for so heavy a labour; and so the beggar was put to the
quern from the morrow.

The cold passed away, and the spring grew to summer, and the quern
was never idle, nor was it turned with grudging labour, for when any
passed the beggar was heard singing as he drove the handle round. The
last gloom, too, had passed from that happy community, for Olioll,
who had always been stupid and unteachable, grew clever, and this was