toes, and cried hoarsely with their voices; and they came with such
immoderate noise and immense horror, that him thought all between
heaven and earth resounded with their voices. And they tugged and
led him out of the cot, and led him to the swart fen, and threw and
sunk him in the muddy waters. After that they brought him into the
wild places of the wilderness, among the thick beds of brambles, that
all his body was torn. After that they took him and beat him with
iron whips; and after that they brought him on their creaking wings
between the cold regions of the air.'

But there are gentler and more human touches in that old legend. You
may read in it, how all the wild birds of the fen came to St.
Guthlac, and he fed them after their kind. How the ravens tormented
him, stealing letters, gloves, and what not, from his visitors; and
then, seized with compunction at his reproofs, brought them back, or
hanged them on the reeds; and how, as Wilfrid, a holy visitant, was
sitting with him, discoursing of the contemplative life, two swallows
came flying in, and lifted up their song, sitting now on the saint's
hand, now on his shoulder, now on his knee. And how, when Wilfrid
wondered thereat, Guthlac made answer, 'Know you not that he who hath
led his life according to God's will, to him the wild beasts and the
wild birds draw the more near.'

After fifteen years of such a life, in fever, agues, and starvation,
no wonder if St. Guthlac died. They buried him in a leaden coffin (a
grand and expensive luxury in the seventh century) which had been
sent to him during his life by a Saxon princess; and then, over his
sacred and wonder-working corpse, as over that of a Buddhist saint,
there rose a chapel, with a community of monks, companies of pilgrims
who came to worship, sick who came to be healed; till, at last,