The walls, of course, have been patched and repaired many times, but are, especially in the chancel, full of Roman bricks and Saxon workmanship. There are indications that some of the courses were actually laid by Roman hands; and, if this be so, imagination may carry us back far earlier than Augustine, to the legend that Joseph of Arimathea brought the Gospel to Britain within a generation of the death of Our Lord. [Illustration: MERCERY LANE (_Page 21_)] On our way back to the town, if we step inside the Infirmary grounds, we shall see the ruins of St. Pancras, built, it is said, by Augustine on the foundations of an "Idol-temple" where Ethelbert worshipped before his conversion. Roman bricks abound, Roman pillars are built into the wall, and there are still the remains of an altar in a tiny chapel where probably Augustine officiated. Now we may return to the "Chequers of the Hope", but not to its dormitory of a hundred beds. There is a fine frankness, far removed from modern municipal ambition, in the names of these old streets. Mercery Lane, Butchery Lane, Wincheap (Wine Market), and Beer-Cart Lane tell their own story. As we look down narrow, crooked Mercery Lane, with its overhanging fronts, struggling to survive "improvements", we not only recognize "the last enchantments of the Middle Age", but we ask what kind of mercery used to stock the stalls under the arcades which once sheltered the sidewalks? Chiefly, no doubt, cheap memorials or "signs" of the accomplished pilgrimage; the little leaden bottles or "ampulles", containing water from the well near Becket's tomb in the crypt, and the infinitesimal tincture therein of the martyr's blood; also leaden brooches representing his mitred head. "These signs", says Dean Stanley, "they fastened on their hats or caps, or hung from their necks, and thus were henceforth distinguished. As the pilgrims from Compostella brought home the scallop-shells which still lie on the seashores of Gallicia--as the 'Palmers' from Palestine brought the palm-branches still given at the Easter Pilgrimage--as the 'roamers' from Rome brought models of St. Peter's keys, or a 'Vernicle'--that is a pattern of Veronica's handkerchief--sewed on their caps--so the Canterbury Pilgrim had his hat thickset with a 'hundred ampulles' or with leaden brooches. Many of these are said to have been found in the beds of the Stour and the Thames, dropped as the vast concourse departed from Canterbury or reached London."