This inn had once been a fine house, the home of a rich burgher; but, having grown old and shabby, it had passed through many hands, until finally it had fallen into the possession of Mynheer Kleef. He was fond of saying as he looked up at its dingy, broken walls--"mend it, and paint it, and there's not a prettier house in Leyden." It stood six stories high from the street. The first three were of equal breadth but of various heights, the last three were in the great, high roof, and grew smaller and smaller like a set of double steps until the top one was lost in a point. The roof was built of short, shining tiles, and the windows, with their little panes, seemed to be scattered irregularly over the face of the building, without the slightest attention to outward effect. But the public room on the ground floor was the landlord's joy and pride. He never said "mend it, and paint it," there, for everything was in the highest condition of Dutch neatness and order. If you will but open your mind's eye you may look into the apartment. Imagine a large, bare room, with a floor that seemed to be made of squares cut out of glazed earthen pie-dishes, first a yellow piece, then a red, until the whole looked like a vast checker-board. Fancy a dozen high-backed wooden chairs standing around; then a great hollow chimney-place all aglow with its blazing fire, reflected a hundred times in the polished steel fire-dogs; a tiled hearth, tiled sides, tiled top, with a Dutch sentence upon it; and over all, high above one's head, a narrow mantel-shelf, filled with shining brass candle-sticks, pipe-lighters and tinder-boxes. Then see in one end of the room, three pine tables; in the other, a closet and a deal dresser. The latter is filled with mugs, dishes, pipes, tankards, earthen and glass bottles, and is guarded at one end by a brass-hooped keg standing upon long legs. Everything dim with tobacco smoke, but otherwise clean as soap and sand can make it. Next picture two sleepy, shabby-looking men, in wooden shoes, seated near the glowing fireplace, hugging their knees and smoking short, stumpy pipes; Mynheer Kleef walking softly and heavily about, clad in leather knee breeches, felt shoes and a green jacket wider than it is long:--then throw a heap of skates in the corner, and put six tired, well-dressed boys, in various attitudes, upon the wooden chairs, and you will see the coffee-room of the "Red Lion" just as it appeared at nine o'clock on the evening of December 6th, 184--. For supper, gingerbread again; slices of Dutch sausage, rye-bread sprinkled with annis-seed; pickles; a bottle of Utrecht water, and a pot of very mysterious coffee. The boys were ravenous enough to take all they could get, and pronounce it excellent. Ben made wry faces, but Jacob declared he had never eaten a better meal. After they had laughed and talked a while, and counted their money by way of settling a discussion that