e nations, like long-divided brothers whom the better
times have brought together, fast united.

CHAPTER III--THE ROAD

My story being finished, and the Wassail too, we broke up as the
Cathedral bell struck Twelve. I did not take leave of my travellers that
night; for it had come into my head to reappear, in conjunction with some
hot coffee, at seven in the morning.

As I passed along the High Street, I heard the Waits at a distance, and
struck off to find them. They were playing near one of the old gates of
the City, at the corner of a wonderfully quaint row of red-brick
tenements, which the clarionet obligingly informed me were inhabited by
the Minor-Canons. They had odd little porches over the doors, like
sounding-boards over old pulpits; and I thought I should like to see one
of the Minor-Canons come out upon his top stop, and favour us with a
little Christmas discourse about the poor scholars of Rochester; taking
for his text the words of his Master relative to the devouring of Widows'
houses.

The clarionet was so communicative, and my inclinations were (as they
generally are) of so vagabond a tendency, that I accompanied the Waits
across an open green called the Vines, and assisted--in the French
sense--at the performance of two waltzes, two polkas, and three Irish
melodies, before I thought of my inn any more. However, I returned to it
then, and found a fiddle in the kitchen, and Ben, the wall-eyed young
man, and two chambermaids, circling round the great deal table with the
utmost animation.

I had a very bad night. It cannot have been owing to the turkey or the
beef,--and the Wassail is out of the question--but in every endeavour
that I made to get to sleep I failed most dismally. I was never asleep;
and in whatsoever unreasonable direction my mind rambled, the effigy of
Master Richard Watts perpetually embarrassed it.

In a word, I only got out of the Worshipful Master Richard Watts's way by
getting out of bed in the dark at six o'clock, and tumbling, as my custom
is, into all the cold water that could be accumulated for the purpose.
The outer air was dull and cold enough in the street, when I came down
there; and the one candle in our supper-room at Watts's Charity looked as
pale in the burning as if it had had a bad night too. But my Travellers
had all slept soundly, and they took to the hot coffee, and the piles of
bread-and-butter, which Ben had arranged like deals in a timber-yard, a