“What! wouldst thou be content with this worn-out place, with more churches than houses, and more empty houses than full ones? No! let us on where there is something doing! Thou wilt see that my Lord of York will have room for the scholar as well as the man-at-arms.” So the kind offer was declined, but Ambrose was grieved to see that the Warden thought him foolish, and perhaps ungrateful. Nevertheless the good man gave them a letter to the Reverend Master Alworthy, singing clerk at St. Paul’s Cathedral, telling Ambrose it might serve them in case they failed to find their uncle, or if my Lord of York’s household should not be in town. He likewise gave them a recommendation which would procure them a night’s lodging at the Grange, and after the morning’s mass and meat, sped them on their way with his blessing, muttering to himself, “That elder one might have been the staff of mine age! Pity on him to be lost in the great and evil City! Yet ’tis a good lad to follow that fiery spark his brother. _Tanquam agnus inter lupos_. Alack!” CHAPTER IV. A HERO’S FALL “These four came all afront and mainly made at me. I made no more ado, but took their seven points on my target—thus—” Shakespeare. The journey to Alton was eventless. It was slow, for the day was a broiling one, and the young foresters missed their oaks and beeches, as they toiled over the chalk downs that rose and sank in endless succession; though they would hardly have slackened their pace if it had not been for poor old Spring, who was sorely distressed by the heat and the want of water on the downs. Every now and then he lay down, panting distressfully, with his tongue hanging out, and his young masters always waited for him, often themselves not sorry to rest in the fragment of shade from a solitary thorn or juniper. The track was plain enough, and there were hamlets at long intervals. Flocks of sheep fed on the short grass, but there was no approaching the shepherds, as they and their dogs regarded Spring as an enemy, to be received with clamour, stones, and teeth, in spite of the dejected looks which might have acquitted him of evil intentions. The travellers reached Alton in the cool of the evening, and were kindly received by a monk, who had charge of a grange just outside the little town, near one of the springs of the River Wey.