Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/24

4 jugglers, athletes, mountebanks, and strolling musicians, and always full of "fools going to look at the devil," as Archbishop Sharpe said. To look at the devil meant to go to the play.

Several inns, which harboured the public and sent them to these outlandish exhibitions, were established in this place, which kept holiday all the year round, and thereby prospered. These inns were simply stalls, occupied only during the day. In the evening the tavern-keeper put the key of the tavern in his pocket and went away. There was but one permanent dwelling on the whole green, the vans on the fair-ground being likely to disappear at any moment, by reason of the absence of any home ties and the vagabond life of all mountebanks. Mountebanks have no roots to their lives.

This inn, called the Tadcaster, after the former owners of the ground, was an inn rather than a tavern, a hotel rather than an inn, and had a carriage entrance and a large yard. The carriage entrance, opening from the court on the field, was the legitimate door of the Tadcaster Inn, which had besides, at the farther end, a small, low door, by which people entered. This small door was the only one used. It opened into a large tap-room, full of tobacco smoke, furnished with tables, and low of ceiling. Over it was a window, to the iron bars of which was fastened and hung the sign of the inn. The principal door was barred and bolted, and always remained closed. It was thus necessary to cross the tavern to enter the courtyard.

At the Tadcaster Inn there was a landlord and a boy. The landlord was called Master Nicless; the boy, Govicum. Master Nicless—Nicholas, doubtless, which the English habit of contraction had made Nicless—was a miserly widower, but one who respected and feared the