It must have been after midnight when, as he lay awake, he could distinctly hear the sound of blows.

Gilbert was not a moment in conjecturing the cause; he knew at once that the venerable priest was subjecting himself to corporal chastisement.

He did not live in an age when voluntary mortification was ridiculed, when a sacred ambition to imitate a crucified God insured contempt from man.

Then, those self-denying religious were not taunted with "the hope of gaining heaven by making earth a hell." And perhaps Gilbert knew that the spiritual peace and delight derived from such chastisements, were infinitely sweeter, even here below, than the impure pleasures of worldlings.

Feeling thus, he could not but contrast the mortified life of that holy man with his own indulged and pampered existence.