I had a spade and pickaxe, and we
borrowed some other tools from the monks, among which were strong
grubbers (which combined the hoe and the pick). There were a number of
people belonging to the monastery, including some young embryo priests,
that we might accept as deacons; these I set to work with the pickaxe at
one shilling a day wages. The boys who were being educated for the
Church I employed in removing all the loose stones which choked the
surface of the ground, and subsequently in sweeping and scraping the
courtyard. I gave them sixpence a day if they worked from early morning,
or threepence if they came at noon after their lessons. There was a
shepherd's family, upon the hill about 250 feet above the monastery, of
seven handsome children, two boys of nineteen and seventeen, and five
girls. These were hard at work, even to a pretty little child of four
years old, who carried her stones, and swept with a little broom with
all her heart (this was little Athena). Of course they were all paid in
the evening with bright new threepenny pieces which they had never seen
before. Even the priests worked after a few days, when the spirit of
industry and new shillings moved them, and in the history of the
monastery there could never have been such a stirring picture and such a
dust as we made in cleansing and alterations. Nearly a month was
occupied in this necessary work, by which time the place was entirely
changed.
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