“None but the barbarians of the Thames,” thought Mike, “none other would have allowed that most shameful bridge.”

Mike hated Simpson’s.  He could not abide the stolid city folk, who devour there five and twenty saddles of mutton in an evening.  He liked better the Cock Tavern, quiet, snug, and intimate.  Wedged with a couple of chums in a comfortable corner, he shouted—­

“Henry, get me a chop and a pint of bitter.”

There he was sure to meet a young barrister ready to talk to him, and they returned together, swinging their sticks, happy in their bachelordom, proud of the old inns and courts.  Often they stayed to look on the church, the church of the Knight Templars, those terrible and mysterious knights who, with crossed legs for sign of mission, and with long swords and kite-shaped shields, lie upon the pavement of the church.

One wet night, when every court and close was buried in a deep, cloying darkness, and the church seemed a dead thing, the pathetic stories of the windows suddenly became dreamily alive, and the organ sighed like one sad at heart.  The young men entered; and in the pomp of the pipes, and in shadows starred by the candles, the lone organist sat playing a fugue by Bach.

“It is,” said Mike, “like turning the pages of some precious missal, adorned with gold thread and bedazzled with rare jewels.  It is like a poem by Edgar Allen Poe.”  Quelled, and in strange awe they listened, and when the music ceased, unable at once to return to the simple prose of their chambers, they lingered, commenting on the mock taste of the architecture of the dining-hall, and laughing at the inflated inscription over the doorway.

“It is worse,” said Mike, “than the Middle Temple Hall—­far worse; but I like this old colonnade, there is something so suggestive in this old inscription in bad Latin.

     ’Vetustissima Templariorum porticu
      Igne consumpta; an 1679
      Nova haec sumptibus medii
      Templie extructa an 1681
      Gulielmo Whiteloche arm
      Thesauoer.’”

Once or twice a week Hall dined at the Cock for the purpose of meeting his friends, whom he invited after dinner to his rooms to smoke and drink till midnight.  His welcome was so cordial that all were glad to come.  The hospitality was that which is met in all chambers in the Temple.  Coffee was made with difficulty, delay, and uncertain result; a bottle of port was sometimes produced; of whiskey and water there was always plenty.  Every one brought his own tobacco; and in decrepit chairs beneath dangerously-laden bookcases some six or seven barristers enjoyed themselves in conversation, smoke, and drink.  Mike recognized how characteristically Temple was this society, how different from the heterogeneous visitors of Temple Gardens in the heyday of Frank’s fortune.