Looking back, he saw that the smaller had mounted on the younger's shoulders, and that they stood so, some ten feet high, waving their adieus to him.

He waved back to them, and then hastened on, the lighter of heart for having fallen in with these strange men of pleasure.
Alleyne had gone no great distance for all the many small passages that had befallen him.

Yet to him, used as he was to a life of such quiet that the failure of a brewing or the altering of an anthem had seemed to be of the deepest import, the quick changing play of the lights and shadows of life was strangely startling and interesting.

A gulf seemed to divide this brisk uncertain existence from the old steady round of work and of prayer which he had left behind him.

The few hours that had passed since he saw the Abbey tower stretched out in his memory until they outgrew whole months of the stagnant life of the cloister.