towards the shady groves and spreading pastures beyond the cathedral precincts.
The verger, who was elderly and slow, called after them in a feeble voice as they went away:
“Maybe you’d like to see the cathedral, gentlemen; it’s well worth seeing.”
But he received no answer. The two men were out of hearing, or did not care to reply to him.
“We’ll take a stroll towards St. Cross, and get an appetite for dinner,” Mr. Dunbar said, as he and his companion walked along a pathway, under the shadow of a moss-grown wall, across a patch of meadow-land, and away into the holy quiet of a grove.
A serene stillness reigned beneath the shelter of the spreading branches. The winding streamlet rippled along amidst wild flowers and trembling rushes; the ground beneath the feet of these two idle wanderers was a soft bed of moss and rarely-trodden grass.
It was a lonely place this grove; for it lay between the meadows and the high-road. Feeble old pensioners from St. Cross came here sometimes, but not often. Enthusiastic disciples of old Izaak Walton now and then invaded the holy quiet of the place: but not often. The loveliest spots on earth are those where man seldom comes.
This spot was most lovely because of its solitude. Only the gentle waving of the leaves, the long melodious note of a lonely bird, and the low whisper of the streamlet, broke the silence.
The two men went into the grove arm-in-arm. One of them was talking, the other listening, and smoking a cigar as he listened. They went into the long arcade beneath the over-arching trees, and the sombre shadows closed about them and hid them from the world.
Chapter 9
How Henry Dunbar Waited Dinner.
The old verger was still pottering about the grey quadrangle, sunning himself in such glimpses of the glorious light as found their way into that shadowy place, when one of the two gentlemen who had spoken to him returned. He was smoking a cigar, and swinging his gold-headed cane lightly as he came along.
“You may as well show me the cathedral,” he said to the verger; “I shouldn’t like to leave Winchester without having seen it; that is to say without having seen it again. I was here forty years ago, when I was a boy; but I have been in India five-and-thirty years, and have seen nothing but Pagan temples.”
“And very beautiful them Pagan places be, sir, bain’t they?” the old man asked, as he unlocked a low door, leading into one of the side aisles of the cathedral.
“Oh yes, very magnificent, of course. But as I was not a soldier, and had no opportunity of handling any of the magnificence in the way of diamonds and so forth, I didn’t particularly care about them.”
They were in the shadowy aisle by this time, and Mr. Dunbar was looking about him with his hat in his hand.
“You didn’t go on to the Ferns, then, sir?” said the verger.
“No, I sent my servant on to inquire if the old lady is at home. If I find that she is, I shall sleep in Winchester to-night, and drive over to-morrow morning to see her. Her husband was a very old friend of mine. How far is it from here to the Ferns?”
“A matter of two mile, sir.”
Mr. Dunbar looked at his watch.
“Then my man ought to be back in an hour’s time,” he said; “I told him to come on to me here. I left him half-way between here and St. Cross.”
“Is that other gentleman your servant, sir?” asked the verger, with unmitigated surprise.
“Yes, that gentleman, as you call him, is, or rather was, my confidential servant. He is a clever fellow, and I make a companion of him. Now, if you please, we will see the chapels.”
Mr. Dunbar evidently desired to put a stop to the garrulous inclinations of the verger.
He walked through the aisle with a careless easy step, and with his head erect, looking about him as he went along: but presently, while the verger was busy unlocking the door of one of the chapels, Mr. Dunbar suddenly reeled like a drunken man, and then dropped heavily upon an oaken bench near the chapel-door.
The verger turned to look at him, and found him wiping the perspiration from his forehead with his perfumed silk handkerchief.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, smiling at the man’s scared face; “my Indian habits have unfitted me for any exertion. The walk in the broiling afternoon sun has knocked me up: or perhaps the wine I drank at Southampton may have had something to do with it,” he added, with a laugh.
The verger ventured to laugh too: and the laughter of the two men echoed harshly through the solemn place.
For more than an hour Mr. Dunbar amused himself by inspecting the cathedral. He was eager to see everything, and to know the meaning of everything. He peered into every nook and corner, going from monument to monument with the patient talkative old verger at his heels; asking questions about every thing he saw; trying to decipher half-obliterated inscriptions upon long-forgotten tombs; sounding the praises of William of Wykeham; admiring the splendid shrines, the sanctified relics of the past, with the delight of a scholar and an antiquarian.
The old verger thought that he had never had so pleasant a task as that of exhibiting his beloved cathedral to this delightful gentleman, just returned from India, and ready to admire everything belonging to his native land.
The verger was still better pleased when Mr. Dunbar gave him half a sovereign as the reward for his afternoon’s trouble.
“Thank you, sir, and kindly, to be sure,” the old man cackled, gratefully. “It’s very seldom as I get gold for my trouble, sir. I’ve shown this cathedral to a dook, sir; but the dook didn’t treat me as liberal as this here, sir.”
Mr. Dunbar smiled.
“Perhaps not,” he said; “the duke mightn’t have been as rich a man as I am in spite of his dukedom.”
“No, to be sure, sir,” the old man answered, looking admiringly at the banker, and sighing plaintively. “It’s well to be rich, sir, it is indeed; and when one have twelve grand-children, and a bed-ridden wife, one finds it hard, sir; one do indeed.”
Perhaps the verger had faint hopes of another half sovereign from this very rich gentleman.
But Mr. Dunbar seated himself upon a bench near the low doorway by which he had entered the cathedral, and looked at his watch.
The verger looked at the watch too; it was a hundred-guinea chronometer, a masterpiece of Benson’s workmanship; and Mr. Dunbar’s arms were emblazoned upon the back. There was a locket attached to the massive gold chain, the locket which contained Laura Dunbar’s miniature.
“Seven o’clock,” exclaimed the banker; “my servant ought to be here by this time.”
“So he ought, sir,” said the verger, who was ready to agree to anything Mr. Dunbar might say; “if he had only to go to the Ferns, sir, he
