The man who had bidden me in stood yet at the open door looking out on his staircase, but he did not bide there long.  With a sigh he turned and closed the door and came in, hardly looking at me, but turning toward the cave I had just noticed.  He was an old man, very old indeed, with a long white beard and pale face lined with countless wrinkles, and he stooped a little as he walked.  But his face was calm and kind, though he did not smile at me, and I felt that here I was safe with one of no common sort.

“Come, my son,” he said, “it is the hour of prime.  Glad am I to have one with me after many days.”

He waited for no answer, and I followed him for the few steps that led to the rock cavern; and there was a tiny oratory with its altar and cross, and wax lights already burning.

The old man knelt in his place and I knelt with him, and as he began the office straightway I knew how worn out I was, and of a sudden the lights danced before me and I reeled and fell with a clatter and clash of arms on the rocky floor.  I seemed to know that the old man turned and looked and rose up from his knees hastily, and I tried to say that I was sorry that I had broken the peace of this holy place; but he answered in his soft voice: 

“Why, poor lad, I should have seen that you were spent ere this.  The fault is mine.”

He raised me gently, and seemed to search me for some wound.  And as he did so I came more to myself, and begged him to go on with his office.

“First comes care of the afflicted, my son, and after that may be prayer.  In truth, to help the fainting is in itself a prayer, as I think.  Come to the fireside and tell me what is amiss.”

“Fasting and fighting and freezing, father,” I said, trying to laugh.

“Are you wounded?” he asked quickly.

“No, not at all.”

“That is well.  It is a brave heart that will jest in such a case as yours, for you are ice from head to foot.  Well, I had better hear your story, if you will tell it me, in the daylight.  Now get those wet garments off you and put on this.  I will get you food, and you shall sleep.”

This was surely the last place where my foes would think of looking for me, and the snow would hide every trace of my path.  So I made no delay, but took off my byrnie and garments.  There was a pool on the floor where I stood, for it was true enough that I had been ice covered.  Then I put on a rough warm brown frock with a cord round the waist, so that I looked like a lay brother at Glastonbury, and all the while I waxed more and more sleepy with the comfort of the place.  But I wiped my arms carefully while the old priest was busy with a cauldron over the fire, and we were ready at the same time.

Then I had a meal of some sort of stew that seemed the best I ever tasted, and a long draught of good mead, while the host looked on in grave content.  And then he spread a heap of dry seaweed in a corner near the fire, and blessed me and bid me sleep.  Nor did I need a second bidding, and I do not think that I can have stirred from the time that I lay down to the moment when I woke with a feeling on me that it was late in the daylight.