But at the back of these thoroughfares, there lie close alleys and courts, where the heat is still more unbearable. No current of air runs through them; and they are so shut out of sight that those who live in them feel no shame, and no fear of being seen by any one less wretched than themselves. There is a dead level of misery and degradation. The dirt becomes more loathsome, and the diseases bred by it more deadly. Half the children born in them die before they have lived out their twelve months of misery. Only those who are singularly strong, or are specially cared for by their mothers, live into the second year. Babies' funerals are so frequent they excite no notice, except that of the children who have survived the common fate, and who follow the little coffin to the end of their own alley, leaving it there, to be carried away into some dim region, of which they know nothing. As for the mothers, the greater portion of them seem to have lost their natural love for their little ones, and are glad to be rid of a care which would have made their lives a still heavier burden to them. It was in one of these close, pent-up alleys that a boy was idling, one hot summer noonday, about the door of a small dwelling in the corner farthest from the street,—a poor house, like all the rest, with more panes of brown paper in its windows than of glass. The four rooms of it, two on each floor, were tenanted by as many families, with their lodgers. There seemed to be a little excitement within, and several women were bustling about, and could be seen through the open door going up and down the staircase. At that time of the day there were but few men about the yard; for most of them were costermongers, and were away at work. But the alley was tolerably well filled with almost naked children, playing noisily in the open gutter, or fighting with one another with still louder noise. The boy joined none of them, but looked on with an absent and anxious face, from time to time peeping in through the open door, or listening intently to every sound in the room at the top of the crazy staircase. All at once he heard a feeble wailing cry; and the tears started into his eyes, why he did not know, but he brushed them off his face hastily, and kept his head turned away, lest anybody should see them. "Sandy!" shouted a woman's voice from the stairhead. "Sandy, give us your jacket to wrap the baby in." If it had been the depth of winter, he would have stripped off his ragged jacket willingly for the new baby. He had a passion for young helpless creatures, and he had nursed and tended two other babies before this one, and had seen them both fade away slowly, and die in this unwholesome air.