iggle, hastening to the door. "We were just
talking of you. Come in; 'tis a late hour; si vespertinus subito--you
remember old Horace? True, we haven't a hen to baste with Falernian for
you, but sure friend Job can find a wedge of Cheshire and a mug of ale.
Come in."

And Desmond went into the inn.

Chapter 6: In which the reader becomes acquainted with William Bulger and
other sailor men; and our hero as a squire of dames acquits himself with
credit.

One warm October afternoon, some ten days after the night of his visit to
the Four Alls, Desmond was walking along the tow path of the Thames,
somewhat north of Kingston. As he came to the spot where the river bends
round towards Teddington, he met a man plodding along with a rope over
his shoulder, hauling a laden hoy.

"Can you tell me the way to the Waterman's Rest?" asked Desmond.

"Ay, that can I," replied the man without stopping. "'Tis about a quarter
mile behind me, right on waterside. And the best beer this side o'
Greenwich."

Thanking him, Desmond walked on. He had not gone many yards farther
before there fell upon his ear, from some point ahead, the sound of
several rough voices raised in chorus, trolling a tune that seemed
familiar to him. As he came nearer to the singers, he distinguished the
words of the song, and remembered the occasion on which he had heard them
before: the evening of Clive's banquet at Market Drayton--the open window
of the Four Alls, the voice of Marmaduke Diggle.

"Sir William Norris, Masulipatam"--these were the first words he caught;
and immediately afterwards the voices broke into the second verse:

"Says Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras,
'I know what you are: an ass, an ass,
An ass, an ass, an ASS, an ASS,'
Signed 'Governor Pitt, Fort George, Madras.'"

And at the conclusion there was a clatter of metal upon wood, and then
one voice, loud and rotund, struck up the first verse once more--"Says
Billy Norris, Masulipatam"--The singer was in the middle of the stave
when Desmond, rounding a privet hedge, came upon the scene. A patch of
greensward, sloping up from a slipway on the riverside; a low,
cozy-looking inn of red brick covered with a crimson creeper; in front of
it a long deal table, and seated at the table a group of some eight or
ten seamen, each with a pewter tankard before him. To the left, and
somewhat in the rear of the long table, was a smaller one, at which two
seamen, by their garb a cut above