ABSTRACT
There lived and dwelt in a certain monastery a pious elder. Once he set off into the garden to walk and listen to the birds. Some sort of bird was singing in a tree so sweetly and with such a pleasant voice. It was just like a bird of paradise. He went up closer to it, lay down on the grass just opposite, and listened. He listened and listened and fell soundly asleep and didn’t wake up. After some time the monks, the brothers, sought out the elder, but he wasn’t there. They waited dinner for him, but he wasn’t there. They waited for vespers for him, but he wasn’t there, they waited supper for him, but he wasn’t there. So they went to the abbot to report it to him. The abbot ordered them to undertake a search of the entire garden immediately. The monks went all around every bush but they didn’t find the elder. The next day they searched again but still they could not find him. So for several days the monks searched and searched, they asked and asked everyone about him, but they couldn’t find out anything about him and they stopped searching. “Apparently,” the monks concluded, “some unkind people took him away, they kidnapped and killed him, and then hid his body somewhere further off.” So later on they noted the elder’s name in the Remembrance book, in the monastic records they noted that the elder had disappeared without a trace on such and such a day—and with that their searches for him came to an end.
