down the pass, now suddenly turned to the left, and seemed to be mounting the rocks.

"Nay-how-what is that?" cried Rheinferd. "Is there a track there?"

"There is a track," said one of the men, "that goes towards Argoles and S. Maurice but such an one as he must be a bold cragsman who treads at noonday."

"Then how can three monks climb it now?" "It must be magic."

said Rheinferd.

"It must be a miracle!" cried another. "Pooh!" said the leader. "I'll give it a shot." And, unstringing his cross-bow, he took steady aim, and the bolt whistled past the light.

"I'll have no more to do with it," said one of the men, when the flame still moved on as before. "There is something out of the common in this."

"Nor I," "Nor I," cried others.

"Nor I," said Rheinferd; "for the chase is not worth the trouble. We shall hardly be back by daylight."

And again they passed those whom they

were seeking, and were soon on their way up

the pass.

"Let us give thanks to GOD," said Majolus, as soon as they were gone by; "and then, good brother, you shall rest till daylight.”

ASTER fell early in the year of grace 1712. It was in the time of the Equinoctial gales; and all that day, from S. Gowan's Head to Barry Island, along the coast of South Wales, there was fierce battle between the everlasting rocks and the great sea. In many a little mountain Church, grey and desolate, scarcely two or three assembled to keep the feast of feasts. The bell in many a pleasant valley rang out almost unheeded. In the seaport towns, men went cautiously along the middle of the street, to avoid the falling tiles and the pouring eaves; in many an upland farm they crowded round the fire, and as the rain drove fiercer

against the lattice, and the wind grappled and growled like an evil beast on the roof, they spoke of the great storm nine years before, and said that there had been nothing like it since. Cloud after cloud poured out its fury on the mountains; Plinlimmon, and Capellante, and the Brecon Beacons, and the Black Mountains stood out like champions, wreathed in vapour, and contending with the elements; each puny hill-stream swelled into a dangerous torrent. And, as night closed in over the earth, the roar of winds and waters grew fiercer and wilder.

Nowhere had the storm been more terrible than round the Worm's Head, the south-western point of Glamorganshire. But yet-sorrow and shame that it should have been so !-it was a welcome day to many a fisherman in the village of Rhosilly, which stands just above the cape. Wrecking then prevailed in South Wales to a fearful extent.

I have heard many

and many a story, when I have been talking with some grey-headed old boatman, or farmer, of the snares that were laid for the unfortunate vessels that sailed in those seas. Often, on

stormy nights, a horse, carrying on its back a bright lantern, was driven slowly backwards and forwards upon the high ground, that the captain at sea might think it a ship tacking, and be lured to his destruction. And that rock-bound coast could tell many a tale of violence, ay, and of murder, which shall never be known till the sea gives up her dead: how the wrecked passenger, who had escaped as by miracle, and who thought that now the bitterness of death was past, was murdered on the very shore, lest he should claim any of his property; how men, in the agony of struggling with the waves, were left to perish, when a rope or a coop might have saved them; or beckoned to land where certain to be dashed in pieces on the hard and pointed rocks. These things were done shamelessly and openly. The trade of the wrecker was looked on in the same light as any other trade; and as our labouring men here might pray for a good bark-harvest, or a sunny hay-tide, or a dry August, so there the fisherman were not afraid to ask GOD for a dark night, a wind on shore, and a rich ship.