Mr. James Swain turned his steps in the direction of the delectable region in which his home was situated. He was in so far more fortunate than many of his class that he had a home, though a wretched one. It consisted of a dingy little room at the back of the third story in a rickety house in Strutton-ground, and was shared with a decrepit female, the elder sister of the boy's dead mother, who earned a frightfully insufficient subsistence by shoe-binding. More precarious than ever was this fragile means of living now, for her sight was failing, as her strength had failed. But things had been looking up with Jim of late, odd jobs had been plenty, his services had reached in certain quarters the status of recognized facts, and the street-boy was kind to his old relative. They were queer people, but not altogether uninteresting, and, strange to say, by no means unhappy. Old Sally had never been taught anything herself but shoe-binding, or she would have imparted instruction to Jim. Now Jim had learned to read in his mother's lifetime, and before his father had "come to grief" and been no more heard of, and it was consequently he who imparted instruction to his aunt. She was as fond of penny romances as the boy himself, and was wonderfully quick at discovering the impenetrable mysteries and unwinding the labyrinthine webs of those amazing productions. So Jim, cheered by the prospect of a lucrative job for the morrow, purchased a fresh and intensely horrible pennyworth by the way, and devoted himself for the evening to the delectation of old Sally, who liked her murders, as she liked her tea and her snuff, strongly flavoured. The pennyworth lasted a good while, for Jim read slowly and elaborately, and conversational digressions occurred frequently. The heroine of the story, a proud and peerless peeress, was peculiarly fascinating to the reader and the listener. "Lor, Jim," said old Sally, when the last line had been spelled over, and Jim was reluctantly obliged to confess that that was "all on it"--"lor, Jim, to think of that sweet pretty creetur, Rorer."--the angelic victim of the story was known to mortals as Aurora,--"knowing as how her ladyship 'ad been and done it all, and dyin' all alone in the moonshine, along o' thinkin' on her mother's villany." Ordinarily, when Jim Swain lay down on his flock bed in the corner, he went to sleep with enviable rapidity; but the old woman's words had touched some chord of association or wonder in his clumsily arranged but not unintelligent mind; so that long after old Sally, in her corner of her little room, was sound asleep, Jim sat up hastily, ran his hands through his tangled hair, and said aloud: "Good Lord! that's it! She's _sure_ she knows it, she knows he did it, and she hidin' on it, and kiverin' of it up, and it's killing her."