'At the first possible opportunity Brown and I began exploring the place.
I had naturally represented myself as being interested in the remains of
the abbey, and we could not avoid paying a visit to the church, impatient
as I was to be elsewhere. Still, it did interest me to see the windows
where the glass had been, and especially that at the east end of the
south aisle. In the tracery lights of that I was startled to see some
fragments and coats-of-arms remaining--Abbot Thomas's shield was there,
and a small figure with a scroll inscribed _Oculos habent, et non
videbunt_ (They have eyes, and shall not see), which, I take it, was a
hit of the Abbot at his Canons.
'But, of course, the principal object was to find the Abbot's house.
There is no prescribed place for this, so far as I know, in the plan of a
monastery; you can't predict of it, as you can of the chapter-house, that
it will be on the eastern side of the cloister, or, as of the dormitory,
that it will communicate with a transept of the church. I felt that if I
asked many questions I might awaken lingering memories of the treasure,
and I thought it best to try first to discover it for myself. It was not
a very long or difficult search. That three-sided court south-east of the
church, with deserted piles of building round it, and grass-grown
pavement, which you saw this morning, was the place.
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