served out
a portion of steaming collops to each guest. Alleyne bore his share and
his ale-mug away with him to a retired trestle in the corner, where he
could sup in peace and watch the strange scene, which was so different
to those silent and well-ordered meals to which he was accustomed.

The room was not unlike a stable. The low ceiling, smoke-blackened and
dingy, was pierced by several square trap-doors with rough-hewn ladders
leading up to them. The walls of bare unpainted planks were studded
here and there with great wooden pins, placed at irregular intervals
and heights, from which hung over-tunics, wallets, whips, bridles, and
saddles. Over the fireplace were suspended six or seven shields of
wood, with coats-of-arms rudely daubed upon them, which showed by their
varying degrees of smokiness and dirt that they had been placed there
at different periods. There was no furniture, save a single long
dresser covered with coarse crockery, and a number of wooden benches and
trestles, the legs of which sank deeply into the soft clay floor, while
the only light, save that of the fire, was furnished by three torches
stuck in sockets on the wall, which flickered and crackled, giving
forth a strong resinous odor. All this was novel and strange to the
cloister-bred youth; but most interesting of all was the motley circle
of guests who sat eating their collops round the blaze. They were a
humble group of wayfarers, such as might have been found that night
in any inn through the length and breadth of England; but to him they
represented that vague world against which he had been so frequently and
so earnestly warned. It did not seem to him from what he could see of it
to be such a very wicked place after all.

Three or four of the men round the fire were evidently underkeepers
and verderers from the forest, sunburned and bearded, with the quick
restless eye and lithe movements of the deer among which they lived.
Close to the corner of the chimney sat a middle-aged gleeman, clad in a
faded garb of Norwich cloth, the tunic of which was so outgrown that it
did not fasten at the neck and at the waist. His face was swollen and
coarse, and his watery protruding eyes spoke of a life which never
wandered very far from the wine-pot. A gilt harp, blotched with many
stains and with two of its strings missing, was tucked under one of his
arms, while with the other he scooped greedily at his platter. Next to
him sat two other men of abou