AN OLD INN. 103 



Birthday Club." The bond entered into by each member on 

 entering this association was, that he should treat the club to 

 plenty of good malt liquor on his every future birthday. There 

 was a constitution and many by-laws, the penalty for breaking 

 which was always to be paid in " beer for the club." 



At other inns we would be shown, by delightfully steep, nar- 

 row, crooked, and every way possible inconvenient stairways, up 

 through low dark spaces of inclined plane, into long, steep-roofed, 

 pigeon-house like rooms, having an air as gloomy and mysterious 

 as it was hot and close. Then, upon our declining to avail our- 

 selves of such romantic and typhous accommodations, instead of 

 being reconducted down by the tortuous path of our ascent, we 

 would be shown, through a back door in the third story, out upon 

 a passage that seemed to be also used as a public street (footway), 

 doors opening from it, which were evidently entrances to residen- 

 ces in the rear. 



Finally we were suited ; and now I am writing on an old oak 

 table, with spiral legs, sitting in an old oak chair, with an Eliza- 

 bethan carved back, my feet on an old oak floor (rather wavy), 

 stout old oak beams over my head, and low walls of old oak wain- 

 scot all around me. Resting on an old oak bench by the window, 

 is a young man with a broad-brimmed felt hat, slouched half over 

 his face. Across the street, so near we might jump into it if we 

 were attacked from the rear, is a house with the most grotesque- 

 ly-carved and acutely-pointed gable possible to be believed real, 

 and not a bit of scene painting, with the date, "1539," cut in 

 awkward figures over the cockloft window, high in the apex. 

 For fifteen minutes there has been a regular " clink, clink" dead- 

 ening all other sounds but the clash of sabres against spurs, and 

 distant bugle-calls, as a body of horsemen are passing in compact 

 columns through the narrow street, from the castle, out by the 

 north gate, towards Rowton Moor. 



