Cross-pall_ or no _cross-pall,_ it looked for all the world like a black 'Y', with a broad arm ending in each of the top corners of the shield, and the tail coming down into the bottom.

You might see that cognizance carved on the manor, and on the stonework and woodwork of the church, and on a score of houses in the village, and it hung on the signboard over the door of the inn.

Everyone knew the Mohune 'Y' for miles around, and a former landlord having called the inn the Why Not?
in jest, the name had stuck to it ever since.
More than once on winter evenings, when men were drinking in the Why Not?
, I had stood outside, and listened to them singing 'Ducky-stones', or 'Kegs bobbing One, Two, Three', or some of the other tunes that sailors sing in the west.

Such songs had neither beginning nor ending, and very little sense to catch hold of in the middle.

One man would crone the air, and the others would crone a solemn chorus, but there was little hard drinking, for Elzevir Block never got drunk himself, and did not like his guests to get drunk either.