It was a lovely June day. All the country looked crisp and bright in the clear sunlight. The road lay over a high hill, whence a broad landscape stretched before them, then it dipped down into the old town of Andover, where the cavalcade stopped before the rambling old wooden hostelry, and the Abbot refreshed himself with a cup of malmsey before they entered on the rather wild track of forest and down that lay between Andover and Winchester. Leaving Andover, they crossed the low land on each side of the Teste, and that river itself near Chilbolton, and then rose over the steep acclivity of Barton Stacey down, with its wide ridge of hills stretching east and west in bleak loneliness, to face the sweeping winds that roared over them from the south-west bringing up the salt of the channel to invigorate the sheep that browsed over their slopes. The Abbot discoursed from time to time of the various duties Ralph would have to fulfil, how he must conduct himself towards his superiors, equals, and inferiors; and his advice was certainly considerably more worldly-wise than had been that of Ralph’s father and mother. The boy listened attentively; but somehow, with the quick intuition of youthful directness, he detected the ring of worldly wisdom, as differing from the ingenuous simplicity of his’ parent’s advice. He could not help being amused and interested with the many little anecdotes with which the Abbot illustrated and enlivened his advice, while he felt more than ever how little he knew of the world and its ways. "Now look you, fair kinsman," said the Abbot. "’Tis a right thing, and one well-pleasing to Holy Church, to be generous and free-handed; but ’tis not wise to give blindly, and without due inquiry. Thou lentest yonder idle vagrant thine horse yesterday. The holy saints guided him aright to thy father’s house; but he might, for aught thou knewest, have just as well taken thine horse to Weyhill horse-fair, and there sold him, or ridden away where thou wouldst never have seen him more." "But, my lord Abbot," cried the boy, "I liked the sound of his voice, and his words were fair: he could not but be honest." "See there now; alack! good lack! the boy will surely come to harm an he goeth on like that! See you not, fair kinsman, that an you hearken to all fair words and gentle voices, you will e’en be stripped as clean as a rose bush with a blight on it? That is what I say, wait and see. I say not ’give not,’ but look well before you give.