“Till the last.  But I’ve come out of this well.”  He chuckled.  “To think what a fool blood makes of a man!  Squire winna touch me, ’cause of you.  But it must gall him; ay, it must gall him.”

“I—­list!” said Diggle suddenly.  “There are footsteps again.  Is it Burke coming back?  The door’s open, Job.”

The innkeeper went to the door and peered into the dark.  A slight figure came up at that moment—­a boy, with a bundle in his hand.

“Is that you, Grinsell?  Is Mr. Diggle in?”

“Come in, my friend,” said Diggle, 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 the others, sat opposite each other, intent on some game.