Of these two friends of my father I shall speak in their proper
place, but have given up this first chapter to him alone. My readers
maybe will grumble that it omits to tell what they would first choose
to learn: the reason why he had exchanged fame and the world for a
Cornish exile. But as yet he only--and perhaps my uncle Gervase, who
kept the accounts--held the key to that secret.



CHAPTER II.


I RIDE ON A PILGRIMAGE.

"_Heus Rogere! fer caballos; Eja, nunc eamus!"
Domum.


At Winchester, which we boys (though we fared hardly) never doubted
to be the first school in the world, as it was the most ancient in
England, we had a song we called _Domum_: and because our common
pride in her--as the best pride will--belittled itself in speech, I
trust that our song honoured Saint Mary of Winton the more in that it
celebrated only the joys of leaving her.

The tale went, it had been composed (in Latin, too) by a boy detained
at school for a punishment during the summer holidays. Another fable
improved on this by chaining him to a tree. A third imprisoned him
in cloisters whence, through the arcades and from the ossuaries of
dead fellows and scholars, he poured out his soul to the swallows