Little children like the Gabriel of former days were playing about the four galleries, and sitting in that part of the cloister bathed by the first rays of the sun.

Women, who reminded of his mother, were shaking the bedclothes out over the garden, or sweeping the red bricks opposite their dwellings; everything seemed the same.

Time had left it quite alone, evidently thinking there was nothing there that he could possibly age.

The "companion" could now see two sketches of lay brothers that he had drawn with charcoal when he was eight years old; had it not been for the children one might have thought that life had been suspended in that corner of the Cathedral, as though this aerial population could neither be born nor die.
The "Wooden Staff," frowning and gloomy since the last words were spoken, tried to give some explanation to his brother.
"I live in our same old house.

They left it to me out of respect to the memory of my father.