"No, I sent my servant on to inquire if the old lady is at home. If I find that she is, I shall sleep in Winchester to-night, and drive over to-morrow morning to see her. Her husband was a very old friend of mine. How far is it from here to the Ferns?" "A matter of two mile, sir." Mr. Dunbar looked at his watch. "Then my man ought to be back in an hour's time," he said; "I told him to come on to me here. I left him half-way between here and St. Cross." "Is that other gentleman your servant, sir?" asked the verger, with unmitigated surprise. "Yes, that gentleman, as you call him, is, or rather was, my confidential servant. He is a clever fellow, and I make a companion of him. Now, if you please, we will see the chapels." Mr. Dunbar evidently desired to put a stop to the garrulous inclinations of the verger. He walked through the aisle with a careless easy step, and with his head erect, looking about him as he went along: but presently, while the verger was busy unlocking the door of one of the chapels, Mr. Dunbar suddenly reeled like a drunken man, and then dropped heavily upon an oaken bench near the chapel-door. The verger turned to look at him, and found him wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his perfumed silk handkerchief. "Don't be alarmed," he said, smiling at the man's scared face; "my Indian habits have unfitted me for any exertion. The walk in the broiling afternoon sun has knocked me up: or perhaps the wine I drank at Southampton may have had something to do with it," he added, with a laugh. The verger ventured to laugh too: and the laughter of the two men echoed harshly through the solemn place. For more than an hour Mr. Dunbar amused himself by inspecting the cathedral. He was eager to see everything, and to know the meaning of everything. He peered into every nook and corner, going from monument to monument with the patient talkative old verger at his heels; asking questions about every thing he saw; trying to decipher half-obliterated inscriptions upon long-forgotten tombs; sounding the praises of William of Wykeham; admiring the splendid shrines, the sanctified relics of the past, with the delight of a scholar and an antiquarian. The old verger thought that he had never had so pleasant a task as that of exhibiting his beloved cathedral to this delightful gentleman, just returned from India, and ready to admire everything belonging to his native land. The verger was still better pleased when Mr. Dunbar gave him half a sovereign as the reward for his afternoon's trouble. "Thank you, sir, and kindly, to be sure," the old man cackled, gratefully. "It's very seldom as I get gold for my trouble, sir. I've shown this cathedral to a dook, sir; but the dook didn't treat me as liberal as this here, sir." Mr. Dunbar smiled. "Perhaps not," he said; "the duke mightn't have been as rich a man as I am in spite of his dukedom."