The luggage was taken up to a private room, and the two
men walked away from the hotel arm-in-arm.
They walked under the shadow of a low stone colonnade, and then turned
aside by the market-place, and made their way into the precincts of the
cathedral. There are quaint old courtyards, and shadowy quadrangles
hereabouts; there are pleasant gardens, where the flowers seem to grow
brighter in the sanctified shade than other flowers that flaunt in the
unhallowed sunshine. There are low old-fashioned houses, with Tudor
windows and ponderous porches, grey gables crowned with yellow
stone-moss, high garden-walls, queer nooks and corners, deep
window-seats in painted oriels, great oaken beams supporting low dark
ceilings, heavy clusters of chimneys half borne down by the weight of
the ivy that clings about them; and over all, the shadow of the great
cathedral broods, like a sheltering wing, preserving the cool quiet of
these cosy sanctuaries.
Beyond this holy shelter fair pastures stretch away to the feet of the
grassy hills: and a winding stream of water wanders in and out: now
hiding in dim groves of spreading elms: now creeping from the darkness,
with a murmuring voice and stealthy gliding motion, to change its very
nature, and become the noisiest brook that ever babbled over sunlit
pebbles on its way to the blue sea.
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