5
"You lean against an ancient trunk," said Egremont, carelessly advancing to the stranger, who looked up at him without any expression of surprise, and then replied. "They say 'tis the trunk beneath whose branches the monks encamped when they came to this valley to raise their building. It was their house, till with the wood and stone around them, their labour and their fine art, they piled up their abbey. And then they were driven out of it, and it came to this. Poor men! poor men!"
"They would hardly have forfeited their resting-place had they deserved to retain it," said Egremont.
"They were rich. I thought it was poverty that was a crime," replied the stranger in a tone of simplicity.
"But they had committed other crimes."
"It may be so; we are very frail. But their history has b
