Not without alacrity the entire company left their confined quarters to breathe such air as is vouchsafed in Vinegar Yard. The subject of inquiry lay at a baker’s shop, ‘a few doors round the corner,’—to use the topographical formula of the parish functionary—and thither he ushered us. A few of the window shutters of the shop were up, but in all other respects there was as little to indicate a house of death as there was to show it to be a house of mourning. If the journeyman had not been standing at the end of the counter in his holiday coat, it would have seemed as if business was going on as usual. There was the same tempting display of tarts, the same heaps of biscuits, the same supply of loaves, the same ranges of flour in paper bags as is to be observed in ordinary bakers’ shops on ordinary occasions. Yet the mistress of this particular baker’s shop lay dead only a few paces within, and its master was in gaol on suspicion of having murdered her. Through a parlour and a sort of passage with a bed and a sink in it,the jury were shown into a confined kitchen. Here, on a mahogany dining-table, lay the remains covered with a dirty sheet. To describe the spectacle which presented itself when the beadle, with business-like immobility turned down the covering, does not happily fall within our present object. It is, however, necessary to say that it presented evidences of continued ill-usage from blows and kicks, not to be beheld without strong indignation. Yet this was not all. ‘The cause of death,’ said the beadle—_his_ mind was quite made up—‘is on the back; it’s covered with bruises: but I suppose you won’t want to see that, gentlemen.’ By no means. Everybody had seen enough; for they were surrounded by whatever could increase distress and engender disgust. The apartment was so small, that the table left only room for the jurors to edge round it one by one; and it was hardly possible to do this, without actual contact with the head or feet of the corpse. A gridiron and other black utensils were hanging against the wall, and could only be escaped by the exercise on the part of the spectators of great ingenuity of motion. This and the bed-place (bed-_room_ is no word for it) indicated squalid poverty; but the scene was changed in the parlour. There, appearances were at least kept up. It was filled with decent furniture—even elegancies; including a pianoforte and a couple of portraits.