"I know you, Pommers, and you
know me, and with the help of Saint Paul we shall teach some other
folk to know us both. Now let us walk together as far as this
moorland pond, for indeed I wot not whether it is you or I who
need the water most."
And so it was that some belated monks of Waverley passing homeward
from the outer farms saw a strange sight which they carried on
with them so that it reached that very night the ears both of
sacrist and of Abbot. For, as they passed through Tilford they
had seen horse and man walking side by side and head by head up
the manor-house lane. And when they had raised their lanterns on
the pair it was none other than the young Squire himself who was
leading home, as a shepherd leads a lamb, the fearsome yellow
horse of Crooksbury.
IV. HOW THE SUMMONER CAME TO THE MANOR HOUSE OF TILFORD
By the date of this chronicle the ascetic sternness of the old
Norman castles had been humanized and refined so that the new
dwellings of the nobility, if less imposing in appearance, were
much more comfortable as places of residence. A gentle race had
built their houses rather for peace than for war. He who compares
the savage bareness of Pevensey or Guildford with the piled
grandeur of Bodmin or Windsor cannot fail to understand the change
in manners which they represent.
The earlier castles had a set purpose, for they were built that
the invaders might hold down the country; but when the Conquest
was once firmly established a castle had lost its meaning save as
a refuge from justice or as a center for civil strife.
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