He got his breakfast early, and afterwards dozed awhile, resting his aching bones in a corner of the coffee-room.  It was nine and after, and the tide of life was roaring through the channels of the city when he roused himself, and to divert his suspense and fend off his growing stiffness went out to look about him.  All was new to him, but he soon wearied of the main streets, where huge drays laden with puncheons of rum and bales of tobacco threatened to crush him, and tarry seamen, their whiskers hanging in ringlets, jostled him at every crossing.  Turning aside into a quiet court he stood to stare at a humble wedding which was leaving a church.  He watched the party out of sight, and then, the church-door standing open, he took the fancy to stroll into the building.  He looked about him at the maze of dusty green-cushioned pews with little alleys winding hither and thither among them; at the great three-decker with its huge sounding-board; at the royal escutcheon, and the faded tables of the law, and was about to leave as aimlessly as he had entered, when he espied the open vestry door.  Popping in his head, his eye fell on a folio bound in sheepskin, that lay open on a chest, a pen and ink beside it.

The attorney was in that state of fatigue of body and languor of mind in which the least trifle amuses.  He tip-toed in, his hat in his hand, and licking his lips as he thought of the law-cases that lay enshrined between those covers, he perused a couple of entries with a kind of professional enthusiasm.  He was beginning a third, which, being by a different hand, was a little hard to decipher, when a black gown that hung on a hook over against him swung noiselessly outward from the wall, and a little old man emerged from the doorway which it masked.

The lawyer, who was stooping over the register, raised himself guiltily.  ‘Hallo!’ he said, to cover his confusion.

‘Hallo!’ the old man answered with a wintry smile.  ’A shilling, if you please.’  And he held out his hand.

‘Oh!’ said Mr. Fishwick, much chap-fallen, ’I was only just—­looking out of curiosity.’

‘It is a shilling to look,’ the newcomer retorted with a chuckle.  ’Only one year, I think?  Just so, anno domini seventeen hundred and sixty-seven.  A shilling, if you please.’

Mr. Fishwick hesitated, but in the end professional pride swayed him, he drew out the coin, and grudgingly handed it over.  ‘Well,’ he said, ’it is a shilling for nothing.  But, I suppose, as you have caught me, I must pay.’

‘I’ve caught a many that way,’ the old fellow answered as he pouched the shilling.  ’But there, I do a lot of work upon them.  There is not a better register kept anywhere than that, nor a parish clerk that knows more about his register than I do, though I say it that should not.  It is clear and clean from old Henry Eighth, with never a break except at the time of the siege, and, by the way, there is an entry about that that you