This matter of the occasional guests of the abbey, so-called, the souls whochose to abandon the working world, sometimes in their prime, and hand overtheir inheritance to the abbey for a soft, shielded, inactive life in a houseof retirement, with food, clothing, firing, all provided without the lifting ofa finger! Did they dream of it for years while they were sweating over lambingewes, or toiling in the harvest, or working hard at a trade? A littlesub-paradise where meals dropped from the sky and there was nothing to do butbask, in the summer, and toast by the fire with mulled ale in the winter? Andwhen they got to it, how long did the enchantment last? How soon did theysicken of doing nothing, and needing to do nothing? In a man blind, lame, sick,he could understand the act. But in those hale and busy, and used to exertingbody and mind? No, that he could not understand. There must be other motives.Not all men could be deceived, or deceive themselves, into mistaking idlenessfor blessedness. What else could provoke such an act? Want of an heir? An urge,not yet understood, to the monastic life, without the immediate courage to goall the way? Perhaps! In a man with a wife, well advanced in years and growingaware of his end, it might be so. Many a man had taken the habit and the cowllate, after children and grandchildren and the heat of a long day. The gracehouse and the guest status might be a stage on the way. Or was it possible thatmen divested themselves of their life’s work at last out of puredespite, against the world, against the unsatisfactory son, against the burdenof carrying their own souls?

Brother Cadfael shut the door upon the rich horehound reek of a mixture forcoughs, and went very soberly to High Mass.

Abbot Heribert departed by the London road, turning his back upon the townof Shrewsbury, in the early morning of a somewhat grey day, the first timethere had been the nip of frost in the air as well as the pale sparkle in the