The stranger jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Salvator they call him--a great learned doctor.” “Well, what about him?” “A needs a merry-Andrew, so to speak.” “I fail to smoke you, friend.” “One to play outside his door and attract custom.” “Ah!” He thought he understood. It was being suggested that he should devote his gift to the services of an empiric, by drawing, siren-like, chance patients to his lure. Well, why not? There was no moral degradation implied in the business. This Salvator might be a perfectly honest practitioner; and in any case his own art would be used for no purpose baser than its wont--to procure him, that was to say, a profitable audience. And with that his responsibility would cease. The issue, for Salvator, would be his own affair. He thought of the comparative rest implied, of his empty pockets. “What sayest thou, Grisel?” said he. The little she ass grunted--a small purr of affection. “Would he make it worth my while?” asked Jack of the pallid rogue. “Take my word for’t,” says he, “and demand your own terms.” The musician hesitated a moment longer, then succumbed. After all, he was committing himself to no more than an interview. “Lead on,” he said, and, the rascal going before, he followed, with the beast, in his tracks. They were here in a wide place of gabled houses, all having stalls below, with a common pent-roof over, and signs of trades innumerable hung, like flags, from its eaves. Out of this spacious thoroughfare they turned sharply into an alley, sunless like a ravine from the overtopping of its tenements, but full of life and bustle. This was Birchin Lane, much inhabited of dealers in second-hand frippery and upholstery, yet with spaces of quiet between, where in the shadows lurked here and there a doorway enclosing some business less officious in its character. And before one of these doors the stranger stopped. A modest sign hung over it, showing the inscription, “Salvator, Physician,” with a tiny pestle and mortar depicted in the top outer corner, and its base was sunk a single step below the street level. “Wait you here,” said the fellow, “the whiles I go before to acquaint my master.” He rapped on the door with the iron knocker, shaped like a sphinx, that hung there, and in a little it was opened to him by a strong, hard-faced woman, who inquired his business. That fact again should have warned our harpist; but the man was a dreamer and simpleton. He noted only that his escort was admitted, and thereafter was content to await his reappearance with patience.