s wide, which could be folded down when
not in use. This was the shove-ha'penny board. The coins--old French
pennies--used in playing this game were kept behind the bar and might
be borrowed on application. On the partition, just above the
shove-ha'penny board was a neatly printed notice, framed and glazed:

NOTICE

Gentlemen using this house are requested to
refrain from using obscene language.

Alongside this notice were a number of gaudily-coloured bills
advertising the local theatre and the music-hall, and another of a
travelling circus and menagerie, then visiting the town and encamped on
a piece of waste ground about half-way on the road to Windley. The
fittings behind the bar, and the counter, were of polished mahogany,
with silvered plate glass at the back of the shelves. On the shelves
were rows of bottles and cut-glass decanters, gin, whisky, brandy and
wines and liqueurs of different kinds.

When Crass, Philpot, Easton and Bundy entered, the landlord, a
well-fed, prosperous-looking individual in white shirt-sleeves, and a
bright maroon fancy waistcoat with a massive gold watch-chain and a
diamond ring, was conversing in an affable, friendly way with one of
his regular customers, who was sitting on the end of the seat close to
the counter, a shabbily dressed, bleary-eyed, degraded, beer-sodden,
trembling wretch, who spent the greater part of every day, and all his
money, in this bar. He was a miserable-looking wreck of a man about
thirty years of age, supposed to be a carpenter, although he never
worked at that trade now. It was commonly said that some years
previously he had married a woman considerably his senior, the landlady
of a third-rate lodging-house. This business was evidently
sufficiently prosperous to enable him to exist without working and to
maintain himself in a condition of perpetual semi-intoxication. This
besotted wretch practically lived at the 'Cricketers'. He came
regularly very morning and sometimes earned a pint of beer by assisting
the barman to sweep up the sawdust or clean the windows. He usually
remained in the bar until closing time every night. He was a very good
customer; not only did he spend whatever money he could get hold of
himself, but he was the cause of others spending money, for he was
acquainted with most of the other regular customers, who, knowing his
impecunious condition, often stood him