eart to rove, to rove
Across the rolling sea."

At the end she came back, and sat down on the bench by Mr Sharnall.

"Will you not give me something to drink?" she said, speaking in very
good English. "You all drink; why should not I?"

He beckoned to the landlord to bring her a glass, and she drank of it,
pledging the organist.

"You sing well," he said, "and with a little training should sing very
well indeed. How do you come to be here? You ought to do better than
this; if I were you, I would not sing in such company."

She looked at him angrily.

"How do _I_ come to be here? How do _you_ come to be here? If I had a
little training, I should sing better, and if I had your training, Mr
Sharnall"--and she brought out his name with a sneering emphasis--"I
should not be here at all, drinking myself silly in a place like this."

She got up, and went back to the old fiddler, but her words had a
sobering influence on the organist, and cut him to the quick. So all
his good resolutions had vanished. His promise to the Bishop was
broken; the Bishop would be back again on Monday, and find him as bad as
ever--would find him worse; for the devil had returned, and was making
riot in the garnished house. He turned to pay his reckoning, but his
half-crown had gone to the Creole; he had no money, he was forced to
explain to the landlord, to humiliate himself, to tell his name and
address. The man grumbled and made demur. Gentlemen who drank in good
company, he said, should be prepared to pay their shot like gentlemen.
Mr Sharnall had drunk enough to make it a serious thing for a poor man
not to get paid. Mr Sharnall's story might be true, but it was a funny
thing for an organist to come and drink at the Merrymouth, and have no
money in his pocket. It had stopped raining; he could leave his
overcoat as a pledge of good faith, and come back and fetch it later.
So Mr Sharnall was constrained to leave this part of his equipment, and
was severed from a well-worn overcoat, which had been the companion of
years. He smiled sadly to himself as he turned at the open door, and
saw his coat still hang dripping on the peg. If it were put up to
auction, would it ever fetch enough to pay for what he had drunk?

It was true that it had stopped raining, and though the sky was still
overcast, there was a lightness diffused behind the clouds that spoke of
a rising moon. What should he do? Whither should he turn? He could
not