That she was doing no wrong in this was certain, for not only her mother, but everybody else in Mirk, agreed that there was no sort of harm in Master Walter, let him do what he might. He had a way of doing things so very different from others. How the very dogs fawned upon him as he sauntered on, and the old horse in the straw-yard stretched its gray head over the gate in hopes of a caress as he went by! How the boys by the roadside left their Snow-man an unfinished torso, and ran to make their bows before the good-natured captain, with an eye to _largesse_, in the form of a copper scramble; and how the school-girls courtesied, with admiring awe, as they pictured to themselves how fine a figure handsome Master Walter must needs cut in gold and scarlet! He had a nod or a word for almost everybody, young or old; but if his look but lit upon another's face, it left a pleasure there, as the Sun leaves when it has shone upon one. Delayed by these reciprocal manifestations of good-will, like a young prince making a Royal Progress among a well-affected people, Walter Lisgard at length got free of the village, and climbing a steep hill (never used by the race-horses even in much less slippery weather), arrived at his destination, the Abbey Farm. This was a long, low, ancient building, belonging to one could scarce tell what date, so pieced, and restored, and added to, had been the original structure; but when the Abbey was an Abbey, the Abbey Farm had been a sort of branch-establishment, in the occupation of the monks; there were traces of their sojourn even now: over the pointed porch yet stood a cross of stone, though broken; and in the garden, now all white and hoar, that lay between the house and road, there was a mighty sundial, carved like a font with noseless saints in niches, and round the rim a scripture, of which alone the words _nox venit_ could be deciphered. The night _had_ come, not only upon those who built and blessed such things, but on the faith which they professed. The very memory of themselves and it had faded from men's minds. Not one in ten at Mirk--where all had owned the Abbot for liege-lord, and bowed their heads before his meanest monk, in token of their soul's humility, but a few centuries back--not one in ten, I say, could tell even what that niche on the south side of the communion-table meant, which the learned called _Piscina_. The mighty bower that had once been the granary of the Abbey, and to which the poor had looked with thankful eyes in times of scarcity, still stood beside the homestead, but the remembrance of its very use was gone; the only legend clinging to its moss-grown walls was that a Long Parliament had once held its sittings there. Save the farmhouse and the barn, all relics of the past had been swept away. Immediately behind them was quite a town of stables and loose boxes, all of the most modern construction, and furnished with the latest inventions for equine comfort.