The air was damp as well as cold. The fugitive, keeping his ungloved hands warm by spreading them around the fowl, which was fresh from the spit, had to grope his way through an inky wind. He listened for possible footfalls behind him, but he heard none, and so he chuckled inwardly and held his prize close to his breast with a sense of security. Now and then he raised it to his nostrils, in anticipation of the feast he should enjoy upon arriving at the resting-place he had in mind. He would have made a strange spectacle to anybody who might have been able to see him from one of the rattling casements as he passed; but so dark it was that downlookers could no more have seen him than he could see the painted plaster, carved cross-timbers, projecting windows, and gabled roof-peaks of the tall houses that lined the narrow street through which he fled.
At one place a lantern hanging over a door threw a faint light upon him for a moment, and showed a young man's face, with sharp features and a soft expression; but the face was instantly gone in the darkness, and there was no other night-walker abroad in the street to have seen it while it was visible.
"Surely," he meditated, as he went, "the time of miracles has returned. And even a starved scholar is found worthy of Heaven's interposition. With the temerity of the famished, I enter a tavern, ascend the stairs, and steal into a room which I take to be empty because no sound comes from it, my only hope being to pilfer a little warmth nobody will miss, perchance to fall heir to a drop of wine at the bottom of a glass, or a bone upon an uncleared table. And lo, I find myself in the presence of a gentleman asleep before a pot of mulled canary, which he has scarce wet his throat withal. In three swallows I make the canary my own, just in time to set down the pot before in comes a tapster. I feign I am in search of friends, who must be in t'other chamber. To make good the deceit, I must needs look in at t'other chamber door; when, behold, some follower of Mars, who looks as hungry as myself, pelts me with poultry. It is plainly a gift of the gods, and I am no such ill-mannered clown as to stay and inquire into the matter. Well, _gaudeamus igitur_, my sweet bird; here we are at St. Mary Cole Church, on the steps of which we shall make each other's better acquaintance. Jove!--or rather Bacchus!--what tumult a pint or so of mulled wine makes in the head of a poor master of arts, when too suddenly imbibed!"