Mr. Morris came up as Chris checked his horse here.

“See, Mr. Christopher,” he said, and the other turned to see the town gallows on the right of the road, not fifty yards away, with a ragged shape or two hanging there, and a great bird rising heavily and winging its way into the west.  Mr. Morris’s face bore a look of judicial satisfaction.

“We are making a sweep of them,” he said, and as a terrible figure, all rags and sores, with blind red eyes and toothless mouth rose croaking and entreating from the ditch by the road, the servant pointed with tight lips and solemn eyes to Hangman’s Acre.  Chris fumbled in his purse, threw a couple of groats on to the ground, and rode on down the hill.

His heart was beating fast as he went down Westgate Lane into the High Street, and it quickened yet further as the great bells in the Priory church began to jangle; for it was close on vesper time, and instinctively he shook his reins to hasten his beast, who was picking his way delicately through the filth and tumbled stones that lay everywhere, for the melodious roar seemed to be bidding him haste and be welcome.  Mr. Morris was close beside him, and remarked on this and that as they went, the spire of St. Ann’s away to the right, with St. Pancras’s Bridge, a swinging sign over an inn with Queen Katharine’s face erased, but plainly visible under Ann Boleyn’s, the tall mound beyond the Priory crowned by a Calvary, and the roof of the famous dove-cote of the Priory, a great cruciform structure with over two thousand cells.  But Christopher knew it all better than the servant, and paid little attention, and besides, his excitement was running too high.  They came down at last through Antioch Street, Puddingbag Lane, and across the dry bed of the Winterbourne, and the gateway was before them.

The bells had ceased by now, after a final stroke.  Mr. Morris sprang off his horse, and drew on the chain that hung by the smaller of the two doors.  There was a sound of footsteps and a face looked out from the grating.  The servant said a word or two; the face disappeared, and a moment later there was the turning of a key, and one leaf of the horse-entrance rolled back.  Chris touched his beast with his heel, passed through on to the paved floor, and sat smiling and flushed, looking down at the old lay-brother, who beamed up at him pleasantly and told him he was expected.

Chris dismounted at once, telling the servant to take the horses round to the stables on the right, and himself went across the open court towards the west end of the church, that rose above him fifty feet into the clear evening air, faced with marble about the two doors, and crowned by the western tower and the high central spire beyond where the bells hung.  On the right lay the long low wall of the Cellarer’s offices, with the kitchen jutting out at the lower end, and the high-pitched refectory roof above and beyond it.  The church was full of golden light