In front of the cathedral, before the Galilee,—the magnificent west porch of the minster of St. Etheldreda,—a Cheap Jack's van was drawn up. Within twenty yards of the Bishop's palace, where every word uttered was audible in every room, a Cheap Jack was offering his wares. Effrontery was, in heraldic language, rampant and regardant. A crowd was collected about the van; a crowd composed of all sorts and conditions of men, jostling each other, trampling on the grass of the lawn, climbing up the carved work of the cathedral, to hear, to see, to bid, to buy. Divine service was hardly over. The organ was still mumbling and tooting, when through the west door came a drift of choristers, who had flung off their surplices and had raced down the nave, that they might bid against and outbid each other for the pocket-knives offered by Cheap Jack. Mr. Faggs, the beadle, was striding in the same direction, relaxing the muscles of his face from the look of severe ecclesiastical solemnity into which they were drawn during divine worship. It had occurred to him during the singing of the anthem that there were sundry articles of domestic utility Cheap Jack was selling that it might be well for him to secure at a low figure. Mr. Bowles, the chief bailiff, had come forth from evensong with his soul lifted up with thankfulness that he was not as other men were: he attended the cathedral daily, he subscribed to all the charities; and now he stood looking on, his breath taken away, his feet riveted to the soil by surprise at the audacity of the Cheap Jack, in daring to draw up before the minster, and vend his wares during the hour of afternoon prayer. The servant maids in the canons' houses in the Close had their heads craned out from such narrow Gothic windows as would allow their brachycephalic skulls to pass, and were listening and lawk-a-mussying and oh-mying over the bargains. Nay, the Bishop himself was in an upper room, the window-sash of which was raised, ensconced behind the curtain, with his ear open and cocked, and he was laughing at what he heard till his apron rippled, his bald head waxed pink, and his calves quivered. Very little of the sides of the van was visible, so encrusted were they with brooms, brushes, door-mats, tin goods, and coalscuttles. Between these articles might be detected the glimmer of the brimstone yellow of the carcase of the shop on wheels. The front of the conveyance was open; it was festooned with crimson plush curtains, drawn back; and, deep in its depths could be discerned racks and ranges of shelves, stored with goods of the most various and inviting description.