That he was very happy I did learn from himself.
He was given a room near Dr. Pusey’s quarters in Christ Church, that adjoined or was under another in which one of the men of the college was lodged.
Now, Brother Augustine had the way of singing the psalms in his discordant bray every night, and one evening the young fellow who was near him, unable to endure the noise, went to his door, knocked, and Brother Augustine appeared at his door half-undressed for bed. The Christ Church man complained—really he could not work—he was going in for his examination, and with that singing—he—he was distracted.
“I beg your pardon humbly! I really am most sorry,” said the poor brother, covered with confusion. “I had no idea—certainly, certainly—you shall not be troubled again.”
So with a bow he saw his visitor depart, shut his door, and with his psalm unfinished went to bed.
He was found next morning dead. He had died apparently painlessly—of heart complaint—gone off in his sleep, to finish his psalm where his voice would give no offence.
Haroun, _bien entendu_, was not his name, but it was that by which some called him among themselves. The reason will appear in the sequel. He lived in a low house of one storey, with a door in the middle, and a window on each side, a typical Welsh cottage, with a thatched roof, and the roof drawn down over the gables, also in a peculiarly Welsh style.
He had his yard and workshop behind the house. In front was a bit of garden, of which he took great care, and which was bright with flowers from earliest spring to latest fall.
“Aaron,” the squire’s wife would say, “how _do_ you manage to get your bulbs to bloom before mine?”
“My lady,” he would reply, “I hold they like the smell of the wood.”
Aaron was, in fact, his Christian name. The reason why, in the rectory and in the Hall, he was called Haroun was this:—
Aaron was a man of one book, and that book was the “Arabian Nights.”
Many years ago a copy was given to the lending library of the village, and was taken out by Aaron Price, the carpenter. He had not read three pages before his mind was in the grip of the narrator. He read, he did not sleep, he did not work, or worked badly, he went to church, but did not pray—his mind had been carried up and away from the present, away from the green Welsh valley in which he lived, away, over the russet mountains to the gorgeous East, and to the times when Jinns were all-powerful unless controlled by Solomon’s seal, and magicians were as common as blackberries and as mischievous as kittens.