her the college, the castle, or the butchers of
Boucher Row. He however found time to talk to the two guests, and being
sprung from a family in the immediate neighbourhood, he knew the
verdurer's name, and ere he was a monk, had joined in the chase in the
Forest.

There was a little oratory attached to the hall, where he and the lay
brethren kept the hours, to a certain degree, putting two or three
services into one, on a liberal interpretation of _laborare est orare_.
Ambrose's responses made their host observe as they went out, "Thou hast
thy Latin pat, my son, there's the making of a scholar in thee."

Then they took their first night's rest away from home, in a small
guest-chamber, with a good bed, though bare in all other respects.
Brother Shoveller likewise had a cell to himself but the lay brethren
slept promiscuously among their sheep-dogs on the floor of the
refectory.

All were afoot in the early morning, and Stephen and Ambrose were
awakened by the tumultuous bleatings of the flock of sheep that were
being driven from their fold to meet their fate at Winchester market.
They heard Brother Shoveller shouting his orders to the shepherds in
tones a great deal more like those of a farmer than of a monk, and they
made haste to dress themselves and join him as he was muttering a
morning abbreviation of his obligatory devotions in the oratory,
observing that they might be in time to hear mass at one of the city
churches, but the sheep might delay them, and they had best break their
fast ere starting.

It was Wednesday, a day usually kept as a moderate fast, so the
breakfast was of oatmeal porridge, flavoured with honey, and washed down
with mead, after which Brother Shoveller mounted his mule, a sleek
creature, whose long ears had an air of great contentment, and rode off,
accommodating his pace to that of his young companions up a stony cart-
track which soon led them to the top of a chalk down, whence, as in a
map, they could see Winchester, surrounded by its walls, lying in a
hollow between the smooth green hills. At one end rose the castle, its
fortifications covering its own hill, beneath, in the valley, the long,
low massive Cathedral, the college buildings and tower with its
pinnacles, and nearer at hand, among the trees, the Almshouse of Noble
Poverty at Saint Cross, beneath the round hill of Saint Catherine.
Churches and monastic buildings stood thickly in the town, and indeed,
Brother Shoveller said,