atts, I stepped backward
into the road to survey my inheritance.

I found it to be a clean white house, of a staid and venerable air, with
the quaint old door already three times mentioned (an arched door),
choice little long low lattice-windows, and a roof of three gables. The
silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and
timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer
old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red-brick
building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign.
Sooth to say, he did an active stroke of work in Rochester, in the old
days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans; and down to the
times of King John, when the rugged castle--I will not undertake to say
how many hundreds of years old then--was abandoned to the centuries of
weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the
ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had pecked its eyes out.

I was very well pleased, both with my property and its situation. While
I was yet surveying it with growing content, I espied, at one of the
upper lattices which stood open, a decent body, of a wholesome matronly
appearance, whose eyes I caught inquiringly addressed to mine. They said
so plainly, "Do you wish to see the house?" that I answered aloud, "Yes,
if you please." And within a minute the old door opened, and I bent my
head, and went down two steps into the entry.

"This," said the matronly presence, ushering me into a low room on the
right, "is where the Travellers sit by the fire, and cook what bits of
suppers they buy with their fourpences."

"O! Then they have no Entertainment?" said I. For the inscription over
the outer door was still running in my head, and I was mentally
repeating, in a kind of tune, "Lodging, entertainment, and fourpence
each."

"They have a fire provided for 'em," returned the matron--a mighty civil
person, not, as I could make out, overpaid; "and these cooking utensils.
And this what's painted on a board is the rules for their behaviour. They
have their fourpences when they get their tickets from the steward over
the way,--for I don't admit 'em myself, they must get their tickets
first,--and sometimes one buys a rasher of bacon, and another a herring,
and another a pound of potatoes, or what not. Sometimes two or three of
'em will club their fourpences together, and make a supper that way. But
not much of anything is