Page:Aelfric's Lives of Saints Vol 1.djvu/529

evening : " for they, the Saints, supposed and thought nothing else, but that they had slept in the evening, and after that awaked in the morning. And he then, Malchus their serving-man, straightway arose in the early morning, and did all as his custom was; he took with him a certain sum of money, as much as might be; however, it might be some two and sixty pence, and the superscription of the money was of the very minting that had been struck in the first year of Decius' succession to the kingdom. Four times they changed the coinage in his days while the Saints still dwelt among other men ; and in the first minting there were two and sixty pence weight of silver in one coin, and in the second just sixty, and in the third four and forty, and in the fourth still less, as they reckoned it there. So the money that Malchus had was of the first minting in Decius' name. So between the days of the first minting of Decius, when the Saints went into the cave, and the time of Theodosius who then was emperor when Malchus bare the money to the town, by the old reckoning, there had past three hundred and seventy-two years, from the day that the Saints slept to the day when they again awoke. He then, Malchus, at once at daybreak went out of the cave ; and when he was out of it, then he saw where the hewn stones lay everywhere thereabout, and he in part wondered thereat, though he did not consider much about it; but he, being afraid, went down from the hill with great fear, and he thence hurried very timidly to the town, and ever he was vexing himself lest some man should recognise him, and straightway make him known to the emperor. He, the Saint, knew not that the other, miserable man! was dead, and had not even one bone [joined] with the others, but [they] lay everywhere broken to pieces and thrown about over the wide earth. And as he, Malchus, was walking quite near by the town-gate, he