11Garth sat on the stile at the end of Prior's Wood and whistled, "Tell it to the soldier, tell it to the sailor, tell it to the lad from the marines." He sat with his back to the wood through which he had come by way of a green winding path known locally as Lovers' Walk, and his face to the Prior's Field, where the ruins of what had been Bourne Priory lay in picturesque disorder. There was still an arch or two of the cloisters where the monks had paced up and down with the western sunlight slanting in, but for the most part what had once been chapel, refectory, dormitories, and kitchen, was now nothing but heaped masonry with much of its stonework pilfered to make the doorsteps, the well-heads, and the tombstones of Bourne. Beyond the field and the tall hedgerow which bordered it was the
