“I assure you, sir,” replied Colin, with emotion, “I have no place to go to, and I do not know a single soul in London. When I get off this coach, I shall not know where to turn, nor what to do!” “Then wot did you come for?” inquired the coachman. “To get a place,” said Colin. “And you don't know where to put up?” “No.” “Humph! Well, m'happen I can tell you. How much money have you got?” Colin satisfied the inquirer on this particular; and in return received the coachman's promise to direct him to a respectable house, at which he might put up until he had done one of two things, either obtained a situation or “got himself cleaned out.” CHAPTER XV. _The “Yorkshire House.”--Its company.--And an adventure._ In the course of some subsequent conversation, Colin's friend the coachman ascertained that his “green” passenger came from some place in the county of York, and instantaneously concluded, by a peculiar process of reasoning, that our hero ought of necessity to put up at a “Yorkshire House.” He forthwith recommended him to a tavern of some notoriety in the city, backing his recommendation with the assurance that, as he was but raw in London, it would be better for him to be amongst his own countrymen. In the “Yorkshire House,” then, we will suppose him. His first business, after having refreshed himself, was to call for ink and paper, and indite an epistle to Squire Lupton, giving him not only an explicit statement of the cause of his precipitate retreat from Bram-leigh, and his consequent inability to attend at the Hall on the appointed day, but also detailing the horrible scene of the lawyer's confession respecting the situation of James Woodruff, which had led to his recent attempt, and compelled that retreat. This being done, and duly despatched, he hastily prepared himself, fevered and confused in brain as he was by the long night-journey, to take a turn in the streets. He longed, as every stranger does who first enters this mighty city, to wander among its endless maze of houses, and witness the vastness of its resources. He passed down one of the by-streets into Cheapside; wondered at the numbers of caravans and carts, the coaches and cabs, which blocked themselves to a temporary stand-still in the streets branching from either side; marvelled what all the vehicles that shot along could be employed for; where the contrary and cross currents of human beings could all possibly be setting in; or how the enormous evidences of almost inconceivable wealth, displayed on all sides, could ever have been thus accumulated. As he ruminated, the crowd every now and then half spun him round, now one way, now another, in the endeavour to pass or to outstrip him. Some belated clerk, hurrying to his duty, put a forcible but inoffensive hand upon his shoulder, and pushed him aside; the butcher's boy (and butchers' boys are _always_ in a hurry) perhaps poked the projecting corner of his wooden tray or the shank of a leg of