asked the reason of his rare mirth. “I saw,” said the pious monarch, “things most wonderful to behold, and therefore did I not laugh without a reason.” They entreated him to explain; and after musing for a while, he informed them that the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, who had been slumbering two hundred years in a cavern of Mount Celion, lying always on their right sides, had of a sudden, turned themselves over on their left sides; that by heavenly favour he had seen them thus turn themselves, and at the sight he had been constrained to laugh. And as Harold and the abbot and bishop marvelled at his words, the king related to them the story of the Seven Sleepers, with the shape and proportion of their several bodies, which wonderful things no man had as yet committed to writing; nay, he spake of the Ephesian sleepers, as though he had always dwelt with them. Earl Harold, on hearing this, got ready a knight, a clerk and a monk, who were forthwith sent to the emperor at Constantinople, with letters and presents from King Edward. By the emperor these messengers were forwarded to Ephesus with letters to the Bishop, commanding him to admit the three Englishmen into the cavern of the sleepers. And, lo! it fell out even as the
