‘Ticket, sir, please,’ said a curt voice at his elbow. Jerome roused himself, took his eyes off Brentwood, and went along the platform, down a little slanting path, which brought him into a road. Here he met a man, and asked him if he knew where Monk’s Gate was.
‘Dun yo mean th’ heawse, or th’ yate itsel’?’ inquired the man.
‘I mean the house.’
‘Well, yo’ mun go through th’ yate for to get to th’ heawse. Yon’s t’ shortest road,’ he pointed down a grassy lane with trees on either side. ‘Keep down thur, and then turn to th’ left, and yo’ conna miss th’ Monk’s Gate, ’cause it straddles o’ across th’ road, and yo’ mun go under it, and turn in at th’ first gate to your left. Yon’s t’ Monk’s Gate House. But it’s empty, and locked oop,’ he added, looking inquiringly at the person who had an errand to Monk’s Gate.
‘I know. I have the key.’
‘M’ appen you belong to ’t?’
‘It belongs to me,’ responded Jerome. ‘Good-day, and thank you.’ With which he walked on, leaving his interlocutor to stare after him, scratch his head, and remark to himself:
‘Well, I’m dom’d! It mun be John Wellfield’s lad. Eh, but I mun go and tell ’em about this ’ere down at th’ Black Bull.’
Jerome, meantime followed the directions he had received, and soon found the cavernous-looking remains of Monk’s Gate, ‘straddling,’ as his guide had said, ‘o’ across t’ road,’ a huge, grim, ivy-covered portal, showing, by its distance from the rest of what were now the Abbey grounds, what a great and glorious possession this said Abbey had once been.
A little way on the other side of the archway to the left, was a gate, leading into a garden; there was a gravel drive going up to a low quaint-looking grey stone house. This, then, must be Monk’s Gate.