He crossed the stream by a white hand-bridge, passed along an upraised path under an avenue of willows, across the open field called Parson's Tye; up the narrow chapel-lane between back-gardens and high walls, into Aldwoldston High Street, curling narrow as a defile between crowding houses, yellow-washed, brown-timbered, amber-tiled.
Conspicuous by its air of age and dignity stood out the Lamb, swarthy as the smugglers who once haunted it; a mass of black timber won, perhaps, from high-beaked galleons in Elizabethan days, with small projecting upper windows through the leaded panes of which eyes watched the street of old, while ears strained for the clatter of the hoofs of tub-laden pack-horses hard-driven from the Haven in the darks. A roof of Horsham slats bowed it to earth; while a huge red ship's figure-head, scarred and hideous as an ogre, propped with its dreadful bulk the corner of the street as it had done for the hundred and fifty years since the vessel of which it was the guardian and the god had been lured to destruction against the ghastly wall of the Seven Sisters. And the carvings, quaint and coloured, on the centre-board reminded Ernie that his father, when once of old their rambles had taken them thus far, had told him that the inn had been in days gone by a sanctuary under the jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle and the next house of call after the Star at Beachbourne for pilgrims on their way from Pevensey to visit the shrine and relics of holy St. Richard-de-la-Wych at Chichester.
Just beyond the Lamb in the little market-square, filled almost by a solitary chestnut-tree, stood the Cross.
Around it, their backs against the brick pediment, gathered the village worthies as they and their fathers had gathered at that hour, under those skies, amid those hills, on Sabbath mornings for centuries innumerable. Standing round the four sides of it, men all, in Sunday negligé and easy attitudes, buttressing the Cross, they smoked and chewed and spat and ruminated. On the fringe of the centre-piece were groups of youths and boys, silent as their elders and as absorbed, whose age and worth did not yet entitle them to a place among the buttresses. No women or girls joined the sacred circle. These stood in the doors of their houses round the square, or sat on their doorsteps, or peeped through the low latticed windows of the Smugglers' House at their masters expectorating round the Cross.
But for a little white terrier, curled on the pediment at his owner's back, who bit his flank with furious zeal, Ernie could have believed that here was a group of rustic statuary set up appropriately to embody the spirit of the place.
A twinkle lurking in his eyes, he asked the most ancient of the buttresses the way to Mr. Boam's cottage.
Very slowly the group stirred to life with grunts, groans, and a shuffling of feet.
Then the ancient one removed his pipe, and, after a preliminary exercise, spoke.
"Old Mus Boam, t' chapel-maaster," he said. "Down River Lane yarnder. Frogs' Hall in t' Brooks. I expagt yo'll find he a-settin on his bricks. Most generally doos o Sunday. For why? Ca'an't get no furderer dese day, I rack'n. Ate up with rheumatiz, he am. Ca'an't goo to Chapel. So Chapel has to goo to he!—he!—he!——" A jest clearly almost as old as the toothless one who made it.
Ernie dropped down River Lane into the valley again. Just behind the willows at the foot of the lane stood a yellow-washed cottage, with a high-pitched roof like a truncated spire.