n the tiles which paved and compassed it, five hundred flickering fires
burnt brightly also. It was not enough that one red curtain shut the
wild night out, and shed its cheerful influence on the room. In every
saucepan lid, and candlestick, and vessel of copper, brass, or tin
that hung upon the walls, were countless ruddy hangings, flashing and
gleaming with every motion of the blaze, and offering, let the eye
wander where it might, interminable vistas of the same rich colour. The
old oak wainscoting, the beams, the chairs, the seats, reflected it in
a deep, dull glimmer. There were fires and red curtains in the very eyes
of the drinkers, in their buttons, in their liquor, in the pipes they
smoked.

Mr Willet sat in what had been his accustomed place five years before,
with his eyes on the eternal boiler; and had sat there since the clock
struck eight, giving no other signs of life than breathing with a loud
and constant snore (though he was wide awake), and from time to time
putting his glass to his lips, or knocking the ashes out of his pipe,
and filling it anew. It was now half-past ten. Mr Cobb and long Phil
Parkes were his companions, as of old, and for two mortal hours and a
half, none of the company had pronounced one word.

Whether people, by dint of sitting together in the same place and the
same relative positions, and doing exactly the same things for a great
many years, acquire a sixth sense, or some unknown power of influencing
each other which serves them in its stead, is a question for philosophy
to settle. But certain it is that old John Willet, Mr Parkes, and Mr
Cobb, were one and all firmly of opinion that they were very jolly
companions--rather choice spirits than otherwise; that they looked at
each other every now and then as if there were a perpetual interchange
of ideas going on among them; that no man considered himself or his
neighbour by any means silent; and that each of them nodded occasionally
when he caught the eye of another, as if he would say, 'You have
expressed yourself extremely well, sir, in relation to that sentiment,
and I quite agree with you.'

The room was so very warm, the tobacco so very good, and the fire so
very soothing, that Mr Willet by degrees began to doze; but as he had
perfectly acquired, by dint of long habit, the art of smoking in his
sleep, and as his breathing was pretty much the same, awake or asleep,
saving that in the latter case he sometimes experienced a sl