Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/184

 of Gypsies, tinkers, sweetmeat sellers, and gay ladies, discoursing together after their use and making a great uproar. In front were some half-dozen mariners from Caerleon; two poor clerks in torn cassocks, expatiating rhetorically in the Latin tongue on this admirable admixture; a lawyer with a keen eye and a stooping back; and a body of minstrels, dressed in motley and fantastick guise, and carrying in their hands, horns, vyalls, and lutes. All clamoured together, some sang, some strove to dance short steps; and all pressed onward; while the sun baked us so that we should have dried up had it not been for the sight of the river and a cool breeze blowing from the eastward slope of Wentwood Chase. I turned me round to a fellow walking at my horse's tail, who bore a heavy pack, and asked him what he did at Uske, and he told me that he would sell there certain sweet cakes of his making, and that he stood for the better part of the day by the Minster gate. Then, burdened with his load of delicates, he fell behind, and another took his place, with a wallet of ballads, one of which he roared out in a rattling bass as a sample of his wares, and sang all the way. At last we came to the bridge and passed into Uske; and as we crossed the river, the bells which for a little while had kept silence, began to chime anew, and up the street called Maryport we made our way slowly amidst a still greater and more various copie of people, and from the castle battlements above us they began to shoot off guns. And as we rode up the street Phil Ambrose put his finger to his