in the east wall of the cloister an equally fine doorway led to the
fourteenth-century chapter-house. Everything was complete on a small
scale.

It was solemn and imposing to the last degree; an effect of age and
decay so perfect that we seemed to meet face to face with the dead past.
To enter these little cloisters was to commune with ghosts and shadows.
If ever they lurked anywhere on earth, here they must be found. We were
infinitely charmed with their tone. In spite of surrounding
houses--where dead walls were seen--a tomb-like silence reigned. We
looked at the small neglected enclosure, where the hand and foot of man
might not have intruded for ages, and almost expected to see rising from
their graves the dead who had possibly lain there for eight centuries.
The stones were stained with damp and the lapse of time; wild unsightly
weeds grew amongst them; but nothing stirred.

As we looked, lost in the past, we became aware that we were not alone.

Entering the small cloister was an aged man with long white hair and a
long grey beard, half-led by a small child of some eight or nine
summers. He might have been one of the patriarchs come back to earth,
and seemed venerable as the cloister themselves. More fitting subject
for such surroundings could not exist. His movements were slow and
deliberate, as though for him time's hour-glass had ceased to run. The
child seemed to have learned to restrain its youthful ardour; gazed up
into the old man's face with fearless affection, and appeared to watch
his will and pleasure. A lovely child, with blue eyes and fair hair, who
might belong to Andalusia, or possibly a northern province of Europe.

"Spring and winter," said H. C., looking at this strange advancing pair.

"Or life and death; for surely they are fitting emblems? Who can they
be, and what do they want in this forsaken spot?"

The child said something to the aged man and motioned towards us. He
paused a moment as though in doubt, then approached yet nearer.

"I am your humble servant, gentlemen," he said, with something of
courtliness in his manner. "It is seldom any one shares with me the
solitude of these cloisters."

"You are then in the habit of coming here?" returning his salutation.

"For many years I have paid them an almost daily visit," was the reply.
"I live not very far off, and they speak to me of the past. A long past,
sirs, for I am old. I have no need to tell you that. You see it in my
face, he