the others towards the Lady
Chapel, where the Hours were sung, since the Choir was in the hands of
workmen, and the sound of chipping stone could be heard from it, where
Bishop Fox's elaborate lace-work reredos was in course of erection.
Passing the shrine of Saint Swithun, and the grand tomb of Cardinal
Beaufort, where his life-coloured effigy filled the boys with wonder,
they followed their leader's example, and knelt within the Lady Chapel,
while the brief Latin service for the ninth hour was sung through by the
canon, clerks, and boys. It really was the Sixth, but cumulative easy-
going treatment of the Breviary had made this the usual time for it, as
the name of noon still testifies. The boys' attention, it must be
confessed, was chiefly expended on the wonderful miracles of the Blessed
Virgin in fresco on the walls of the chapel, all tending to prove that
here was hope for those who said their Ave in any extremity of fire or
flood.

Nones ended, Father Shoveller, with many a halt for greeting or for
gossip, took the lads up the hill towards the wide fortified space where
the old Castle and royal Hall of Henry of Winchester looked down on the
city, and after some friendly passages with the warder at the gate,
Father Shoveller explained that he was in quest of some one recently
come from court, of whom the striplings in his company could make
inquiry concerning a kinsman in the household of my Lord Archbishop of
York. The warder scratched his head, and bethinking himself that
Eastcheap Jockey was the reverend father's man, summoned a horse-boy to
call that worthy.

"Where was he?"

"Sitting over his pottle in the Hall," was the reply, and the monk, with
a laugh savouring little of asceticism, said he would seek him there,
and accordingly crossed the court to the noble Hall, with its lofty dark
marble columns, and the Round Table of King Arthur suspended at the
upper end. The governor of the Castle had risen from his meal long ago,
but the garrison in the piping times of peace would make their ration of
ale last as far into the afternoon as their commanders would suffer.
And half a dozen men still sat there, one or two snoring, two playing at
dice on a clear corner of the board, and another, a smart well-dressed
fellow in a bright scarlet jerkin, laying down the law to a country
bumpkin, who looked somewhat dazed. The first of these was, as it
appeared, Eastcheap Jockey, and there was something both of the
r