A day or two after Bill returns alone; the girl asks him where her sweetheart is. 'He's lagged,' says Bill. But the girl has a bit of newspaper, and in it she reads that 'the body of a man has been found in some woods near London;' and she has an idea it may be John. 'Oh, nonsense,' says Bill--I quote the evidence--'he then lit his candle, and they retired to rest.' John, as a matter of fact, had been murdered by his companion, they having quarrelled over the division of the proceeds of the burglary; and eventually this young woman, who so readily transferred her affections from one lord to another, appeared in the witness-box and deposed to pawning boots and other things for Bill which were undoubtedly the proceeds of a robbery at a house close to where the body was found. This is the house in which we stand where the burglary was planned--whence the murderer and the murdered set out together on their fatal journey. It was at one of these tables that the young girl discussed her absent lover's fate with her new lord, his murderer, and it was here that the police came to search for him and found the girl whose evidence helped to hang him. Look at the people who sit there to-day--murderers and burglars some of them, cheats and pickpockets others, and a few respectable folks as far as their opportunities will allow. But remember that dozens of really respectable families do have to frequent these places now, and mix with malefactors day and night, because there are no other places open to them. Among all the cruelties practised on the poor in the name of Metropolitan improvements this one deserves mentioning--that the labourer earning a precarious livelihood with his wife and his children have been driven at last to accept the shelter of a thieves' kitchen and to be thankful for it. CHAPTER III. |I cannot help being struck, in my wanderings through Povertyopolis, with the extraordinary resemblance which Caesar bore to Pompey--especially Pompey. One room in this district is very like the other. The family likeness of the chairs and tables is truly remarkable, especially in the matter of legs. Most chairs are born with four legs, but the chairs one meets with here are a two-legged race--a four-legged chair is a _rara avis_, and when found should be made a note of. The tables, too, are of a type indigenous to the spot. The survival of the fittest does not obtain in these districts in the matter of tables. The most positively unfit are common, very common objects. What has become of the fittest I hesitate to conjecture. Possibly they have run away. I am quite sure that a table with legs would make use of them to escape from such surroundings.