As may be supposed, the ambassador was not slow to avail himself of the permission. [Illustration] BOOK II. THE ROYAL NUPTIALS. CHAPTER I. OLD WINCHESTER FROM SAINT CATHERINE’S HILL. Know you the fair hill, crowned by a clump of trees, with a zone around its waist, and a carpet of smooth turf spread out upon its banks, arising from the well-wooded and well-watered meads in the immediate vicinity of the ancient city of Winchester? If you are a Wykehamist, you know it well. Graven on the brow of the hill is a labyrinth, or maze, the work of a poor student, who, being debarred from the delights of home during the holiday season, occupied his weary hours in this strange task, while his heart-sickness found relief in a ditty, still sung by his successors at Wykeham’s famous school. The legend goes on to relate that the hapless youth, who thus carved a memorial on the hill, pined away and died beneath one of the trees on its summit. If so, his gentle spirit must still haunt the spot! Lower down, an entrenchment, deeply cut in the chalk, and attributed to the Dane, encompasses the hill. The base of the mount is washed by the silver Itchen—a stream dear to old Izaak Walton, whose remains have rested, ever since his “ninety years and more” were told, in the adjacent cathedral. Other hills there are hard by—as Saint Giles’s, whereon the greatest fair in England was annually held from the period of the Conquest to the reign of Henry VI.; and Saint Mary Magdalene’s, on which the Empress Maud and the valorous prelate Henry de Blois, brother of King Stephen, met to treat—but neither of these eminences are comparable in beauty of form, or in charm of situation, to fair Saint Catherine’s Hill.