and fished, as he sat waiting for him, for the common meal. A
simple, happy, gentle life was that of the Laura, all portioned out
by rules and methods, which were held hardly less sacred than those
of the Scriptures, on which they were supposed (and not so wrongly
either) to have been framed. Each man had food and raiment, shelter
on earth, friends and counsellors, living trust in the continual
care of Almighty God; and, blazing before his eyes, by day and
night, the hope of everlasting glory beyond all poets' dreams ....
And what more would man have had in those days? Thither they had
fled out of cities, compared with which Paris is earnest and
Gomorrha chaste,--out of a rotten, infernal, dying world of tyrants
and slaves, hypocrites and wantons,--to ponder undisturbed on duty
and on judgment, on death and eternity, heaven and hell; to find a
common creed, a common interest, a common hope, common duties,
pleasures, and sorrows .... True, they had many of them fled from
the post where God had placed them, when they fled from man into the
Thebaid waste .... What sort of post and what sort of an age they
were, from which those old monks fled, we shall see, perhaps, before
this tale is told out.

'Thou art late, son,' said the abbot, steadfastly working away at
his palm-basket, as Philammon approached.

'Fuel is scarce, and I was forced to go far.'

'A monk should not answer till he is questioned. I did not ask the
reason. Where didst thou find that wood?'

'Before the temple, far up the glen.'