Page:Aelfric's Lives of Saints Vol 1.djvu/463

 They sought  very  carefully  for  the  shoe,

but no  man  was  ever  able  to  find  it  there.

So they  returned  home  with  the  man  that  had  been  healed.

There were  healed  there,  at  the  holy  tomb,

eight sick  men,  miraculously,  by  the  power  of  God,

before that  he  was  taken  up  out  of  the  tomb.

After these  signs  King  Eadgar  then

desired that  the  holy  man  should  be  exhumed,

and said  to  the  venerable  bishop  AEthelwold

that he  should  translate  him  with  great  pomp.

Then bishop  AEthelwold,  with  abbots  and  monks,

solemnly took  up  the  saint  with  chanting,

and bore  him  into  the  church,  St. Peter's house.

There he  abideth  in  honour  and  worketh  miracles.

Then there  were  healed,  by  the  holy  man,

four sick  men  within  three  days;

and during  five  months  there  were  few  days

when there  were  not  healed  at  least  three  sick  persons ;

sometimes five  or  six,  or  seven  or  eight,

ten or  twelve,  sixteen  or  eighteen.

Within ten  days  two  hundred  men  were  healed,

and  so   many  within  twelve  months  that  no   man    could    count them.

The burial-ground  lay  filled  with  crippled  folk,

so that  people  could  hardly  get  into  the  minster ;

and they  were  all  so  miraculously  healed

within a  few  days,  that  one  could  not  find  there

five unsound  men  out  of  that  great  crowd.

In those  days  there  were  in  the  Isle  of  Wight  three  women,

two of  them  had  been  blind  for  the  space  of  nine  years,

and the  third  had  never  seen  the  sun's  light,