Very full of thought, I went forward until I had come into that web of mean streets I spoke of, below Tower Royal, which was where Idonia had said her guardian should probably be found. But although I spent the greater part of the afternoon in that quarter, I saw him not, nor any I dared trust, to inquire after him. Indeed, the longer I stayed, the more ill-considered and absurd did my precipitancy to this business appear, so that at last I gave it over altogether, and being by then got as far as to the Three Cranes Wharf, I stood idly there a great while, watching the wharfingers at their task of ordering the heavy goods that were there piled up and stored. Against the wharf lay a barge or lighter moored, which I perceived had but lately discharged the cargo of some great galley that rested below bridge in the fairway. There is ever something that fascinates a man in this his own careless regarding of other men at work; and I had already stayed upon the quay no small while, before I bethought myself to return; though, when I had so determined, it came upon me that 'twas one thing to get out of prison (I mean mine Inn), but altogether a different matter to get in again, and so fell to considering whether I should make my entrance boldly by the ordinary door, or whether creep in after nightfall, by the vent in the cellar-wall I had escaped by. Now I had not altogether decided this matter, when I found myself in that steep little lane I had inadvertently descended so many months since in the fog, of which the houses upon both sides stood almost all of them closed up and shuttered as though (to repeat what I then said) the place had been visited by the plague; which deathlike and stealthy character it yet maintained. There was nobody, man nor child, in the street as I slowly mounted it, a strange sense of abhorrence and foreboding gathering about my heart: while to this distress of my mind was now added the annoyance of a smart squall of rain and wind, that, suddenly breaking, had soon wetted me through, but for my crouching close beneath the shallow porch of a door upon the right hand, where I availed myself of such shelter as it afforded.