text:  The benches were lined with a pack of overgrown rascals in corduroy vestments and with leather at the knees from all the neighbouring villages; in a gallery at one end sat a Scotch bagpiper flanked by a blind fiddler and an itinerant performer on the hurdygurdy accompanied by his monkey--who in the course of his circuit through the village had that morning received a special retainer in the shape of half a quartern of gin for the occasion; while in the usher's chair were ensconced two urchins of about fourteen years of age smoking tobacco playing at all fours and drinking purl with their legs diffused in a picturesque attitude along the writing-desk