"Nay, he yet liveth," said a third, who had alighted. "I feel his heart beat; he is quite warm. But, oh! Saint Benedict! what a wound, what a ghastly gash across the shoulder."
"Raise him on the sumpter mule; we must bear him home and tend him. Remember the good Samaritan."
"But first let me bind up the wound as well as I can, and pour in oil and wine. I will take him before me. Sancta Maria! what a weight! No, good dog, we mean thy master no harm."
But the dog offered no opposition; he saw his master was in good hands. He only tried as well as his own wounds would let him to caper for joy.
"Poor dog, he hath been hurt too. How chanced it? What a mystery."
Happily the good brothers never travelled without medicinal stores, and a little ointment modifies pain.
So in a short time they were on their road again, carrying the wounded with them.
They were practical Christians, those monks.
The Abbey of Dorchester stood on the banks of the river Tame, a small stream arising near the town of the same name, and watering the finest pasture land of the county of Oxfordshire, until, half a mile below the Abbey, it falls into the Isis, which thence, strictly speaking, becomes the Thames (Tamesis).
This little town of Dorchester is not unknown to fame; it was first a British town, then a Roman city. Destroyed by the Saxons, it rose from its ashes to become the Cathedral city of the West Saxons, and the scene of the baptism of Cynegils, son of Ceol, by the hands of St. Birinus. The see was transferred to Winchester, but afterwards it became the seat of the great Mercian bishopric, and as its jurisdiction had once reached the Channel, so now it extended to the Humber and the Wash.
Cruelly destroyed by the Danes, it never regained its importance, and on account of its impoverished state,[9] the see was again removed by Remigius, the first Norman Bishop, to Lincoln, in the year 1092. But although the ancient city was thus deserted, the Bishop strove to make it some amends. He took care that an abbey should be created at Dorchester, lest the place should be ruined, or sunk in oblivion; and some say the Abbey was built with the stones which came from the Bishop's palace, the site of which is still marked by a farm called "Bishop's Court."