rethren in their habits down glades of mighty
oaks, or through sparse plantations of birches, beneath which grew
brakes of wild raspberries that would redden with the yellowing corn,
gave him as assurance of that old England before the Reformation to
which he looked back as to a Golden Age. Years after, when much that was
good and much that was bad in his monastic experience had been
forgotten, he held in his memory one of these walks on a fine afternoon
at July's end within the octave of St. Mary Magdalene. It happened that
Sir Charles had not accompanied the monks that Sunday; but in his place
was an old priest who had spent the week-end as a guest in the Abbey and
who had said Mass for the brethren that morning. This had given Mark
deep pleasure, because it was the Sunday after Esther's profession, and
he had been able to make his intention her present joy and future
happiness. He had been silent throughout the walk, seeming to listen in
turn to Brother Dunstan's rhapsodies about the forthcoming arrival of
Brother George and Brother Birinus with all that it meant to him of
responsibility more than he could bear removed from his shoulders; or to
Brother Raymond's doubts if it should not be made a rule that when no
priest was in the Abbey the brethren ought to walk over to Wivelrod, the
church Sir Charles attended four miles away, or to Brother Jerome's
disclaimer of Roman sympathies in voicing his opinion that the Office
should be said in Latin. Actually he paid little attention to any of
them, his thoughts being far away with Esther. They had chosen Hollybush
Down for their walk that Sunday, because they thought that the view over
many miles of country would please the ancient priest. Seated on the
short aromatic grass in the shade of a massive hawthorn full-berried
with tawny fruit, the brethren looked down across a slope dotted with
junipers to the view outspread before them. None spoke, for it had been
warm work in their habits to climb the burnished grass. It would have
been hard to explain the significance of that group, unless it were due
to some haphazard achievement of perfect form; yet somehow for Mark that
moment was taken from time and placed in eternity, so that whenever
afterward in his life he read about the Middle Ages he was able to be
what he read, merely by re-conjuring that monkish company in the shade
of that hawthorn tree.

On their way back to the Abbey Mark found himself walking with Mr.
Lamplu