LONDON TOWN 99

and towers reared their heads above the crowding chim-
ney-pots.

Then the players dressed themselves in fair array, and
flung their banners out, and came through Smithfield to
Aldersgate, mocking the grim old gibbet there with railing
gaiety ; and through the gate rode into London town, with
a long, loud cheer that brought the people crowding to
their doors, and set the shutters creaking everywhere.

Nick was bewildered by the countless shifting gables
and the throngs of people flowing onward like a stream,
and stunned by the roar that seemed to boil out of the
very ground. The horses’ hoofs clashed on the unevenly
paved street with a noise like a thousand smithies. The
houses hung above him till they almost hid the sky, and
seemed to be reeling and ready to fall upon his head
when he looked up; so that he urged the little roan with
his uneasy heels, and wished himself out of this monstrous. °
ruck where the walls were so close together that there
was not elbow-room to live, and the air seemed only heat,
thick and stifling, full of dust and smells.

Shop after shop, and booth on booth, until Nick won-
dered where the gardens were; and such a maze of lanes,
byways, courts, blind alleys, and passages that his simple
country footpath head went all into a tangle, and he could
scarcely have told Tottenham Court road from the river
Thames.

All that he remembered afterward was that, turning
from High Holborn into the Farringdon road, he saw a
great church, under Ludgate Hill, with spire burned and