VOLUME ONE—CHAPTER THREE.: FURTHER INTRODUCTIONS.

IN THE FAINT LIGHT OF early morning, some ten years after the scene described in the last chapter, at that cold dank hour when the struggle is going on between night and day, and the former is being slowly and laboriously conquered,—when Chancery-lane looked at its worst, and the passed-away region of Bennett’s-rents more sordid and desolate than ever. The gas-lamps still glimmered in the street, while the solitary light at the end of the Rents yet burned dimly, and as if half-destroyed by mephitic vapour, when the door of Number 27 was opened, closed loudly, and a man clattered heavily over the broken pavement, creating an unnecessary amount of noise as he slowly made his way out through the narrow archway into the street, but watching on either side with observant eye the while. It seemed darker when he reached the Lane, where, after glancing hastily up and down for a minute, he softly thrust off his boots,—a pair of heavy lace-ups,—and then, taking them in his hand, he ran lightly back, with the stooping gait and eager hound-like air of some savage beast on the trail of its prey. But the next moment he was at the door he had quitted, had opened it softly and slipped in, ignorant that a face at the third-floor window opposite was watching his movements with looks yet keener than his own.

Holding his breath, the man stood in the passage of the old house for a few seconds; then, passing along softly, he stole down the damp, half-rotten cellar-stairs, starting once and giving vent to a half-suppressed ejaculation as a cat dashed hastily by him, when he paused to wipe the cold perspiration from his forehead with his sleeve. Then he stood at the bottom in front of the cellar-door, in the damp dark place where ashes gritted beneath his feet, and the foul smell of half-decayed vege