rough stone--and dug out the interior to a depth of some feet, and
thatched it with sticks and grass; and made, it seems, two rooms
within; one for an oratory, one for a dwelling-place: and so lived
alone, and worshipped God. He grew his scanty crops of barley on
the rock (men said, of course, by miracle): he had tried wheat,
but, as was to be expected, it failed. He found (men said, of
course, by miracle) a spring upon the rock. Now and then brethren
came to visit him. And what did man need more, save a clear
conscience and the presence of his Creator? Certainly not Cuthbert.
When he asked the brethren to bring him a beam that he might prop up
his cabin where the sea had eaten out the floor, and when they
forgot the commission, the sea itself washed one up in the very cove
where it was needed: when the choughs from the cliff stole his
barley and the straw from the roof of his little hospice, he had
only to reprove them, and they never offended again; on one
occasion, indeed, they atoned for their offence by bringing him a
lump of suet, wherewith he greased his shoes for many a day. We are
not bound to believe this story; it is one of many which hang about
the memory of St. Cuthbert, and which have sprung out of that love
of the wild birds which may have grown up in the good man during his
long wanderings through woods and over moors. He bequeathed (so it
was believed) as a sacred legacy to the wild-fowl of the Farne
islands, "St. Cuthbert's peace;" above all to the eider-ducks, which
swarmed there in his days, but are now, alas! growing rarer and
rarer, from the intrusion of vulgar sportsmen who never heard St.
Cuthbert's name, or learnt from him to spare God's creatures when
they need them not. On Farne, in Reginald's time, they bred under
your very bed, got out of your way if you made a sign to them, let
you take up them or their young ones, and nestled silently in your
bosom, and croaked joyfully with fluttering wings when stroked.