object, I followed the pair, and passed with them into the most ancient and least reputable quarter of the city. They trudged from street to street, through squalid courts and lanes, until I questioned the propriety of proceeding, and the likelihood of my ever getting home again. At length, however, they stopped. It was a close, narrow, densely peopled lane in which they halted. The road was thick with mud and filth; the pavement and the doorways of the houses were filled with ill-clad sickly children, the houses themselves looked forbidding and unclean. The bread-stealer and his wife were recognised by half a dozen coarse women, who, half intoxicated, thronged the entrance to the house opposite to that in which they lodged, and a significant laugh and nod of the head were the greetings with which they received the released one back again. There was little heart or sympathy in the movement, and the wretched couple understood it so. The woman had dried her tears--both held down their heads--even there--for shame, and both crawled into the hole in which, for their children's sake, they _lived_, and were content to find their home. Now, then, it was time to retrace my steps. It was, but I could not move from the spot--that is, not retreat from it, as yet. There was something to do. My conscience cried aloud to me, and, thank God, was clamorous till I grew human and obedient. I entered the house. A child was sitting at the foot of the stairs, her face and arms begrimed--her black hair hanging to her back foul with disease and dirt. She was about nine years old; but evil knowledge, cunning duplicity, and the rest, were glaring in her precocious face. She clasped her knees with her extended hands, and swinging backwards and forwards, sang, in a loud and impudent voice, the burden of an obscene song. I asked this creature if a man named Warton dwelt there. She ceased her song, and commenced whistling--then stared me full in the face and burst into loud laughter. "What will you give if I tell you?" said she, with a bold grin. "Will you stand a glass of gin?"