pointed with the cudgel he carried
under his arm now to the gloom behind us, now to the homely galaxy
before us, and gabbled on so fast and so earnestly that I began to
suppose he was a little crazed.

One word, however, I caught at last from all this jargon, and that
often repeated with a little bow to me, and an uneasy smile on his
white face--"Mishrush, Mishrush!" But whether by this he meant to
convey to me his habitual mood, or his own name, I did not learn till
afterwards. I stopped in the heavy road and raised my hand.

"An inn," I cried in his ear, "I want lodging, supper--a tavern, an
inn!" as if addressing a child or a natural.

He began gesticulating again, evidently vain of having fully
understood me. Indeed, he twisted his little head upon his shoulders
to observe Rosinante gauntly labouring on. "'Ame!--'ame!" he cried
with a great effort.

I nodded.

"Ah!" he cried piteously.

He led me, after a few minutes' journey, into the cobbled yard of a
bright-painted inn, on whose signboard a rising sun glimmered faintly
gold, and these letters standing close above it--"The World's End."

Mr. "Mishrush" seemed not a little relieved at nearing company after
his lonely walk; triumphant, too, at having guided me hither so
cunningly. He lifted his nimble cudgel in the air and waved it
conceitedly to and fro in time to the song that rose beyond the
window. "Fau'ow er Wur'!--Fau'ow er Wur'!" he cried delightedly again
and again in my ear, eager apparently for my approval. So we stood,
then, beneath the starless sky, listening to the rich _choragium_ of
the "World's End." They sang in unison, sang with a kind of forlorn
heat and enthusiasm. And when the song was ended, and the roar of
applause over, Night, like a darkened water whelmed silently in,
engulfed it to the echo:

Follow the World--
She bursts the grape,
And dandles man
In her green lap;
She moulds her Creature
From the clay,
And crumbles him
To dust away:
Follow the World!

One Draught, one Feast,
One Wench, one Tomb;
And thou must straight
To ashes come:
Drink, eat, and sleep;
Why fret and pine?
Death can but snatch
What ne'er was thine:
Follow the World!

It died away, I say, and an ostler softly appeared out of the shadow.
Into his charge, then, I surrendered Rosinante, and followed my
inarticulate acquaintance into the noise and heat and