His companion's ready wit and knowledge of the world—the very worst part of the world, unhappily—amused the languid Anglo-Indian: and by the time the travellers reached Winchester, they were on excellent terms with each other. Joseph Wilmot was thoroughly at home with his patron; and as the two men were dressed in the same fashion, and had pretty much the same nonchalance of manner, it would have been very difficult for a stranger to have discovered which was the servant and which the master. One of them ordered dinner for eight o'clock, the best dinner the house could provide. The luggage was taken up to a private room, and the two men walked away from the hotel arm-in-arm. They walked under the shadow of a low stone colonnade, and then turned aside by the market-place, and made their way into the precincts of the cathedral. There are quaint old courtyards, and shadowy quadrangles hereabouts; there are pleasant gardens, where the flowers seem to grow brighter in the sanctified shade than other flowers that flaunt in the unhallowed sunshine. There are low old-fashioned houses, with Tudor windows and ponderous porches, grey gables crowned with yellow stone-moss, high garden-walls, queer nooks and corners, deep window-seats in painted oriels, great oaken beams supporting low dark ceilings, heavy clusters of chimneys half borne down by the weight of the ivy that clings about them; and over all, the shadow of the great cathedral broods, like a sheltering wing, preserving the cool quiet of these cosy sanctuaries. Beyond this holy shelter fair pastures stretch away to the feet of the grassy hills: and a winding stream of water wanders in and out: now hiding in dim groves of spreading elms: now creeping from the darkness, with a murmuring voice and stealthy gliding motion, to change its very nature, and become the noisiest brook that ever babbled over sunlit pebbles on its way to the blue sea. In one of the grey stone quadrangles close under the cathedral wall, the two men, still arm-in-arm, stopped to make an inquiry about Mr. Michael Marston, of the Ferns, St. Cross. Alas! Ben Bolt, it is a fine thing to sail away to foreign shores and prosper there; but it is not so pleasant to come home and hear that Alice is dead and buried; that of all your old companions there is only one left to greet you; and that even the brook, which rippled through your boyish dreams, as you lay asleep amongst the rushes on its brink, has dried up for ever! Mr. Michael Marston had been dead more than ten years. His widow, an elderly lady, was still living at the Ferns. This was the information which the two men obtained from a verger, whom they found prowling about the quadrangle, Very little was said. One of the men asked the necessary questions. But neither of them expressed either regret or surprise. They walked away silently, still arm-in-arm, towards the shady groves and spreading pastures beyond the cathedral precincts.