The lives of many of those old scholars and worthies had become familiar to him, since he had read Anthony à Wood's _Athenae Oxonienses_, and he had gone sometimes with his friend on antiquarian walks about Oxford, and the colleges Wood described. Or Gerard would lend him a horse, and they would ride out to visit the historic places and villages that lie in the old country about--Woodstock, Cumnor, Abingdon--the names were familiar to him of long date; had he not first read of some of them, and the scenes they were famous for, in Jones' _Excelsior Reader_, out in Indiana as a boy? He spoke of the village churches, that seemed so beautiful on those June afternoons, as they stood among their old trees and flowers, with the white clouds in the sky above, a shiver of wind in the long grass over the graves. And then, through the scent of roses about the open door, the dim interior, with its white Norman arches, and light falling from painted windows on the crusaders' tombs--on all the many monuments of the dead. The dead! Sutton wrote that he had always known of the times gone by, and the faith of the Middle Ages, but only in an unreal way, through books. And it made such a difference--to him at least--if he saw the proof of a thing, actually existing with the daylight on it! "Once, Gerard says, these churches were filled in the morning and evening light with labouring people kneeling in silent prayer. But that, of course, was in the Dark Ages. Gerard thinks that the world has done nothing but go back since the Middle Ages; certainly he does hate everything that is modern. How he will detest Parnassus City, if he comes to see me there, as he says he will. It has been bad for him, I am sure, living out of the world, as he has lived, among old memories and dreams of his own. He is a Catholic, you know, but he respects my religion; he knows, of course, what my views are, and we never talk about theology. There is a friend of his I meet sometimes a priest, and I suppose a Jesuit. But he seems really quite a cultivated person." Foley took up another letter: They had ridden out, Sutton wrote, to an old country house and park, where Charles I. had stayed once, while Parliament was being held in Oxford. The house, all save one wing, now a farm-house, had been torn down; but on the hill overlooking the lake, in the midst of the green shade of beeches, the chapel was still standing, abandoned now, and almost untouched, save by decay and time, since the polite court of the Stuarts had said their worldly devotions there. What rich brocades, what hushed gallantries and frivolous prayers had once rustled and whispered under the graceful high arches of those pews! But birds had their nests there now, he said, while through the decaying roof the rain dripped down on the frail woodwork, the classic columns and fading colours of this deserted place of elegant worship and old fashion.