‘You fool!’ roared the old gentleman; ‘we put up at the “Falcon,” of course. The idea,’ he continued indignantly, ‘of our going elsewhere, when the opportunity is afforded us of residing under the very roof which once sheltered our immortal bard!’ ‘Shakespeare did not live in an inn, did he, uncle?’ inquired Margaret demurely. She knew perfectly well that he had not done so, but was unwilling to let this outburst against her cousin pass by without some kind of protest. ‘Well, no,’ admitted Mr. Erin; ‘but he lived just opposite to it, and, it is supposed—indeed, it may be reasonably concluded—that he patronised it for his—ahem—convivial entertainments.’ ‘I suppose there is some foundation for the story of the “Topers” and the “Sippers,”’ observed Dennis, ‘and for the bard being found under the crab-tree _vino et somno_.’ ‘There may be, there may be,’ returned the other indifferently; ‘but as for Shakespeare being beaten, even in a contest of potations, that is entirely out of the question. It was not in the nature of the man. If he ran, he would run quickest; if he jumped, he would jump the highest; and if he drank, he would undoubtedly have drunk deeper than anybody else.’ The Falcon Inn had no great extent of accommodation—it was perhaps too full of ‘association’ for it—but Margaret had a neat chamber enough; and, since it looked on the Guild Chapel and Grammar School where Shakespeare had been educated, and on the walls which surrounded the spot where he had spent his latter days, the niece of her uncle could hardly have anything to complain of. The young men had an attic apiece. As to what sort of a room was assigned to Mr. Samuel Erin, he could not have told you himself, for he took no notice of it. His head was always out of the window. It was his first sight of the shrine of his idol, and the very air seemed to be laden with incense from it. To think that that long, low tenement yonder, with the projecting front, was the very house in which Shakespeare had ‘crept unwillingly to school,’ that his young feet had helped to wear those very stones away, and that that ancient archway had echoed his very tones, sent a thrill of awe through him such as could only be compared with that felt by some mediæval beholder of ‘a bit of the true cross.’ But, in that case, faith—and a good deal of it—had been essential to conviction; whereas in this the facts were indisputable. Behind yonder walls, too, stood the house to which, full of honour though not of years, he had retired to spend that leisure in old age which he had desiderated more than most men. The aim of all is but to crown the life With honour, wealth, and ease in waning age,