Why should the great bell of Beaulieu toll when the shadows were neither short nor long?
All round the Abbey the monks were trooping in.

Under the long green-paved avenues of gnarled 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-pits and 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 swift messenger had the night before sped round to the outlying dependencies of the Abbey, and had left the summons for every monk to be back in the cloisters by the third hour after noontide.