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formed the residences of the bedesmen. It was flagged all round, and the centre was stoned; small stone gutters ran from the four corners of the square to a grating in the centre; and attached to the end of Mr. Harding’s house was a conduit with four cocks covered over from the weather, at which the old men got their water, and very generally performed their morning toilet. It was a quiet, sombre place, shaded over by the trees of the warden’s garden. On the side towards the river, there stood a row of stone seats, on which the old men would sit and gaze at the little fish, as they flitted by in the running stream. On the other side of the river was a rich, green meadow, running up to and joining the deanery, and as little open to the public as the garden of the dean itself. Nothing, therefore, could be more private than the quad of the hospital; and it was there that the archdeacon determined to convey to them his sense of their refractory proceedings.
    The servant soon brought in word that the men were assembled in the quad, and the archdeacon, big with his purpose, rose to address them.
    “Well, warden, of course you’re coming,” said he, seeing that Mr. Harding did not prepare to follow him.
    “I wish you’d excuse me,” said Mr. Harding.
    “For heaven’s sake, don’t let us have division in the camp,” replied the archdeacon: “let us have a long pull and a strong pull, but above all a pull all together; come, warden, come; don’t be afraid of your duty.”
    Mr. Harding was afraid; he was afraid that he was being led to do that which was not his duty; he was not, however, strong enough to resist, so he got up and followed his son-in-law.
    The old men were assembled in groups in the quadrangle—eleven of them at least, for poor old Johnny Bell was bedridden, and couldn’t come; he had, however, put his mark to the petition, as one of Handy’s earliest followers. ‘Tis true he could not move from the bed where he lay; ‘tis true he had no friend on earth, but those whom the hospital contained; and of those the warden and his daughter were the most constant and most appreciated; ‘tis true that everything was administered to him which his failing body could require, or which his faint appetite could enjoy; but still his dull eye had glistened for a moment at the idea of possessing a hundred pounds a year “to his own cheek,” as Abel Handy had eloquently expressed it; and poor old Johnny Bell had greedily put his mark to the petition.
    When the two clergymen appeared, they all uncovered their heads. Handy was slow to do it, and hesitated; but the black coat and waistcoat of which he had spoken so irreverently in Skulpit’s room, had its effect even on him, and he too doffed his hat. Bunce, advancing before the others, bowed lowly to the archdeacon, and with affectionate reverence expressed his wish, that the warden and Miss Eleanor were quite well; “and the doctor’s lady,” he added, turning to the archdeacon, “and the children at Plumstead, and my lord;” and having made his speech, he also retired among the others, and took his place with the rest upon the stone benches.
    As the archdeacon stood up to make his speech, erect in the middle of that little square, he looked like an ecclesiastical statue placed there, as a fitting impersonation of the church militant here on earth; his shovel hat, large, new, and well-pronounced, a churchman’s hat in every inch, declared the profession as plainly as does the Quaker’s broad brim; his heavy eyebrows, large open eyes, and full mouth and chin expressed the solidity of his order; the broad chest, amply covered with fine cloth, told how well-to-do was its estate; one hand ensconced within his pocket, evinced the practical hold which our mother Church keeps on her temporal possessions; and the other, loose for action, was ready to fight if need be in her defence; and, below these, the decorous breeches, and neat black gaiters showing so admirably