-- VI. Law 103 -- VII. A New Light 116 -- VIII. Triumph and Terror 129 -- IX. Visitors 150 -- X. The Minor Canon 171 -- XI. Another Evening at the Deanery 190 -- XII. Brother and Sister 209 -- XIII. Captain Despard 227 -- XIV. The Workroom 242 -- XV. Romance and Reality 261 -- XVI. The Signor’s Household 279 WITHIN THE PRECINCTS. CHAPTER I. ST. MICHAEL’S. The Abbey Church of St. Michael’s stands on a low hill in a flat and fertile country. The holy places which are sacred to the great archangel seem to settle naturally upon a mount; and this, one of the noblest structures consecrated under his name, had all the effect of a very high elevation--so wide-spreading was the landscape round, so vast the sweep of plain, fields, and woods, great parks and commons, and gleaming white villages like ships at sea, which could be seen from its walls and terraces. Though the settlement was ecclesiastical, the place had been walled and defensible in the days when danger threatened wealth whatever form it assumed. Danger, however, had long been far from the thoughts of the dignified corporation which held its reverend court upon the hill. The Abbey was as splendid as any cathedral, and possessed a dean and chapter, though no bishop. It was of Late Gothic, perpendicular and magnificent; and the walls and towers which still surrounded it, and even the old houses within the precincts, were older still than the Abbey, and could have furnished many “bits” to make the heart of a mediæval architect glad. The very turf which filled the quadrangle and clothed the slope of the Dean’s Walk was a production of centuries; the Chapter House was full of historical documents, and the library of rare books; and there were antiquarian fanatics who protested that the wealthy livings belonging to the Abbey, and its old endowments, were the least of its riches. Nor was this establishment on the hill confined to ecclesiastical interests only. The beautiful church was the chapel of an order of knighthood, and opposite to it--forming an integral part of the pile of buildings--was a line of small ancient houses, forming a kind of screen and inner wall of defence to the sacred citadel, which were the lodges of a supplementary order of pensioners--Chevaliers of St. Michael--which at the time of the foundation had given such a balance, as the Middle Ages loved, of Christian charity and help, to the splendour and braggadocio of the more glorious knights.