ST. COLUMBA 109 her desperation sounded the walls, and found that behind the logs and faggots there was a long-disused little door opening into a cellar. She took a candle with her, went down some damp and dusty steps, and found herself in a large cave, where she heard the distant sound of the sea. She could hardly believe her ears, for she knew it was a good half- league from Greville to the shore. While she was wondering and hesitating she heard sounds as if her pursuers were trying to break open the bolted door of her little room. She decided not to be recaptured. She hastily closed up the door through which she had passed, and fled along the damp, dark under- ground gallery. At one time she thought the cave came to an end and that there was no escape, but presently she discovered a passage so narrow that she had to crawl. She was encouraged by feeling fresh air, and hearing more and more plainly the sound of the waves, and as the day dawned she found herself at the hole under the rock called le Bocher du Cdiet. She knew the place well, as she had often been there fishing, for shrimps and gathering shells. She thanked G^ for her escape, and walked back to her home. She told her parents she had been to the cavern of the Cdtet, but she seemed rather confused as to how she had got there. It was supposed that she had tumbled ofif the rock at the en- trance of the cleft, that she had fainted, and remained there a long time. She returned to her usual occupations, but not with her former cheerfulness. She did not talk, and when spoken to she only answered in monosyllables. Baking- day came round. She undertook the task as usual. Some of the neighbours saw her heating the oven with faggots of fern and gorse, and passing that way later in the day, they saw that the oven was shut. They supposed she had put in her dough and gone away, and they thought no more about it. When it was time to take out the bread, as Columba did not make her appearance, her friends went to the bake-house, and then it was evident that the oven had not been fas- tened up with clay on the outside as usual, but that the clay was inside. They removed the stone, and, instead of the bread which they expected to find in the oven, they only saw a white dove, which flew out of the door and disap- peared. Columba had condemned her- self to go alive into the oven; and to show that her fault was forgiven, she had been changed into a dove. Mean- time the priest had heard of her return to her parents' house, but he had not dared to show himself there, nor to meet her on the road ; he listened, however, to everything that was said about her, and when he heard that she had been changed into a dove, he exclaimed, " Co- lumba is saved, but I am lost I " Forth- with he went and hanged himself in a little field near his house. This enclo- sure, which lies between the priest's garden and that of the modern communal school, is considered accursed. It is left uncultivated, and although it is close to the schoolmaster's garden, it remains separated from it by a wall. The statue of St. Columba may still be seen in the old romanesque church of Gr6ville, and, for further proof of the story, le Bocher du Cdtet stands in a hollow of the/a/at«ei) which fall away below it perpendicularly on each side, and under the cdtet is a cleft called to this day le Trou de Ste. Colomhe, inaccessible at high- water, and invisible until the traveller is close to it. It is so small that two men could scarcely enter it abreast, and so narrow that it would be disagreeable to explore its slimy depths. It is said that even before the time of Columba a cock was thrown into this hole, by way of experi- ment, and its crowing was heard in the church next day — an important part of the evidence for the whole story. Fleury, Litt^rature orale de la Basse-Normandie, B. Columba (14), Dec. 31. Becluse at and founder of the monastery of Cortenberg, or Cortemberg, between Brussels and Louvain. Her tomb was destroyed by the Calvinists, 1572. Bu- celinus, Men, Ben, Gynecaeum. St. Columba (15), or Angiola, May 20, V. of Bieti. 1467-1501. 3rdO.S.D. Appealed to by those hindered and beset by the devil and his temptations and . attacks. Her name is supposed to have been Guadagnioli ; an old picture of this
