Aderhold walked that summer far and wide, learning the countryside. Now he wandered in deep woods, now he climbed the hills and looked upon the fair landscape shining away, now he entered leafy, hidden vales, or traced some stream upward to its source, or downward to the murmur of wider waters. Several times he walked to the town. Here was a bookshop, where, if he could not buy, he could yet stand awhile and read.... He loved the view of this town with the winding river and the bridge, and above the climbing streets the old castle and the castle wood. He liked to wander in its streets and to mark the mellow light upon its houses. Now and then he went into the great church where the light fell through stained glass and lay athwart old pillars. Once he found himself here, sitting in the shadow of a pillar, when people began to enter. Some especial service was to be held, he knew not wherefore. The organ rolled and he sat where he was, for he loved music. There was a sermon, and it was directed against Puritan and Presbyterian, and more especially against that taint of Republicanism which clung to their Geneva cloaks. No such imputation breathed against the surplice. _The Divine Right of Kings._—_The duty of Passive Obedience._—_Authority! Authority! Authority!_ It rolled through the church, boomed forth with passion. Aderhold, coming out into the sunshine, walked through the town and found himself upon the London road. It was high summer, the sun yet far aloft, and when it sank the round pearl of the moon would rise. He had not before walked upon this road. An interest stirred within him to view the country toward the Rose Tavern, travelled through in the darkness that night. He left the town behind him and walked southward. Between two and three miles out, he saw before him a little rise in the road, and crowning it, a gibbet with some bones and shrivelled flesh swinging in the chains. It was nothing uncommon; he had seen in France a weary number of such signposts, and on this great road, coming north from London, he had twice passed such a thing. It was so fair and soft a summer’s day, the gauzy air filled with dancing sunbeams, the sky a melting blue—the very upright and cross of the gibbet faded into it and seemed robbed of horror. Indeed, long usage had to the eyes of most robbed it of frightfulness at any hour, unless it was in the dead of night when the chains creaked, creaked, and something sighed. The traffic of the road went talking and jesting by, with hardly a glance aside at the arm across the sky. Aderhold sat down upon the opposite bank, amid fern and foxglove, and with his chin in his hand regarded the gibbet. Now and again man and beast passed, but they paid no attention to the dusty, seated figure. For the greater while the road lay bare. He gazed, dreaming, and through the mists of time he seemed to see Judea....