His tongue and palate seem’d so parch’d with drouth,-- The very knocker fill’d his soul with dread, As if it had a living lion’s mouth, With teeth so terrible, and tongue so red, In which he had engaged to put his head, The bell-pull turn’d his courage into vapour, As though ’t would cause a shower-bath to shed Its thousand shocks, to make him sigh and caper-- He look’d askance, and did not like the scraper. “What business have I here? (he thought) a dunce A hopeless passion thus to fan and foster, Instead of putting out its wick at once; She’s gone--it’s very evident I’ve lost her,-- And to the wanton wind I should have toss’d her-- Pish! I will leave her with her moon, at ease, To toast and eat it, like a single Gloster, Or cram some fool with it, as good green cheese, Or make a honey-moon, if so she please. “Yes--here I leave her,” and as thus he spoke, He plied the knocker with such needless force, It almost split the panel of sound oak; And then he went as wildly through a course Of ringing, till he made abrupt divorce Between the bell and its dumfounded handle, Whilst up ran Betty, out of breath and hoarse, And thrust into his face her blown-out candle, To recognise the author of such scandal. Who, presto! cloak, and carpet-bag to boot, Went stumbling, rumbling, up the dark one pair, With other noise than his whose “very foot Had music in’t as he came up the stair:” And then with no more manners than a bear, His hat upon his head, no matter how, No modest tap his presence to declare, He bolted in a room, without a bow, And there sat Ellen, with a marble brow! Like fond Medora, watching at her window, Yet not of any Corsair bark in search-- The jutting lodging-house of Mrs. Lindo, “The Cheapest House in Town” of Todd and Sturch. The private house of Reverend Doctor Birch, The public-house, closed nightly at eleven, And then that house of prayer, the parish church, Some roofs, and chimneys, and a glimpse of heaven, Made up the whole look-out of Number Seven. [Illustration: “MEET ME BY MOONLIGHT ALONE.”] Yet something in the prospect so absorbed her, She seemed quite drowned and dozing in a dream; As if her own belov’d full moon still orb’d her, Lulling her fancy in some lunar scheme, With lost Lorenzo, may be, for its theme-- Yet when Lorenzo touch’d her on the shoulder, She started up with an abortive scream, As if some midnight ghost, from regions colder, Had come within his bony arms to fold her.