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The great bell of Beaulieu was ringing. Far away through the forest might be heard itsmusical clangor and swell. Peat-cutters on Blackdown and fishers upon the Exe heard thedistant throbbing rising and falling upon the sultry summer air. It was a common sound inthose parts-as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern. Yet thefishers and the peasants raised their heads and looked questions at each other, for theangelus had already gone and vespers was still far off. Why should the great bell ofBeaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?All round the Abbey the monks were trooping in. Under the long green-paved avenues ofgnarled oaks and of lichened beeches the white-robed brothers gathered to the sound.From the vine-yard and the vine-press, from the bouvary or ox-farm, from the marl-pitsand salterns, even from the distant iron-works of Sowley and the outlying grange of St.Leonard's, they had all turned their steps homewards. It had been no sudden call. A swiftmessenger had the night before sped round to the outlying dependencies of the Abbey, andhad left the summons for every monk to be back in the cloisters by the third hour afternoontide. So urgent a message had not been issued within the memory of old lay-brotherAthanasius, who had cleaned the Abbey knocker since the year after the Battle ofBannockburn.

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