[illustration: The White Hart Inn, Southwark, in 1858. From
an engraving by Fairholt, after a drawing by J. Sachs]

Dickens then goes on to give further particulars of how the yard
looked on the particular morning of which he writes:

"The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the
usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four lumbering
wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample canopy, about
the height of the second-floor window of an ordinary house, were
stowed away beneath a lofty roof which extended over one end of the
yard; and another, which was probably to commence its journey that
morning, was drawn out into the open space. A double tier of
bedroom galleries, with old, clumsy balustrades, ran round two sides
of the straggling area, and a double row of bells to correspond,
sheltered from the weather by a little sloping roof, hung over the
door. . . . Two or three gigs and chaise-carts were wheeled up under
different little sheds and penthouses; and the occasional heavy
tread of a carthorse or rattling of a chain at the further end of
the yard announced to anybody who cared about the matter that the
stable lay in that direction. When we add that a few boys in smock
frocks were lying asleep on heavy packages, wool-packs and other
articles that were scattered about on heaps of straw, we have
described as fully as need be the general appearance of the yard
of the White Hart Inn, High Street, Borough, on the particular
morning in question."

This was the inn, then, to which Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Wardle
came in search of the runaway couple, and Sam Weller was the first
person they interviewed on the subject. The reader will refer to