‘God in Heaven,’ cried the Friar, ‘let us drink again. And they all drank again. And the Friar threw the dice, and they all threw the dice; and the longer they played the more the Friar won, until he had a long score against them all chalked up on the wall. ‘Thou’st won twelve pence of me,’ said Watkin the Ploughman. ‘For the love of Our Lady, I would not that my wife, Tyb, heard thereof.’ ‘For my part,’ said Clement the Cuckold, ‘I care no more what my wife should say than the heel of my left boot, although Master Traveller has won sixteen good pennies of me.’ ‘Fy, fy, Clement Carry-Lie,’ cried Clarice of Cock’s Lane. ‘This fellow has the luck of Ragman Roll,’ said Thomas the Cobbler. ‘That cursed quean must score me up on the door with her chalk,’ said Long Hugh, ‘for I shall have no more pennies for ale till next market-day.’ ‘What, good fellows all,’ cried the Friar, ‘do you vex yourselves for a little coin? Why, take this and share it amongst you,’ and he threw on the board a handful of silver pennies. ‘Why, this is a good master,’ they cried as they shared the coin among them. ‘This cock crows in the right sort.’ Then came a jolly company of musicians on the green outside the alehouse door, and made a merry noise with pipes and tabors and drums and cymbals. The tune they played ran through the head like a Devil’s own canticle, sighing and skirling by turns through the secret cells of the brain, where all the desires of the sweet flesh are locked up and whence they only escape when they brim over their narrow confines, or are charmed forth by sweet music, or some other cunning allurement. ‘Tira-la-lee, tira-la-lee, Down in the meadows so early; Tira-la-lee, tira-la-lee, And the green wheat and the barley.’ For an instant the Friar thought of his narrow room, of his books, of his studies, of the hourglass, the solemn bell, the dim organ, the divine services; the panorama of that other life passed through his brain like the swift shadow on the green grass. ‘Oh, a Carol, a Carol!’ cried Brown Alice. ‘I love a Carol of all things.’ ‘Where got ye your trouble, my dear? Where got ye it, plain to be seen? Oh, I got it St. John’s, a-dancing Carols, At night on our village green. Who gave you your trouble, my dear? Who gave you it, plain to be seen? Oh, I cannot tell how I got it myself, That night on our village green.’ The wanton words of Brown Alice set the Friar’s heart on fire. All the sweet bells in Christendom began to ring in his ears, the merry music played in his toes, in his arms, in his head, in his trunk, in his whole body. He leapt to his feet and waved his arms fantastically round his head, whilst his toes beat the floor in time. ‘A round dance, a round dance,’ he cried. ‘A Carol, a Carol,’ cried Clarice of Cock’s Lane. ‘A Ballad, a Ballad,’ cried Watkin the Ploughman and Nicholas the Waggoner together.