Mrs. Bristow, a civil, full-flavoured Irishwoman, readily consented to act cicerone, and we went through the passage into the back garden, where all the poor household furniture of the homicide's late "home" was stacked. It did not occupy a large space, consisting only of the bedstead on which the poor woman sat when the fatal deed was done, two rickety tables, and two chairs. These were all the movables of a family of nine. The mattress was left inside--too horrible a sight, after what had taken place, to be exposed to the light of day. We passed--Honora Bristow and myself--with a "gossip" or two, who had come to see what I was after, into the back kitchen, for the wifeslayer had two rooms en suite, though the family elected to occupy only one. The floor of this apartment was either mother earth, or, if flagged, so grimed with filth as to be a very fair resemblance of the soil. Here stood only that terrible memento, the drenched mattress. In the front kitchen--which, let me state, would have been palatial in comparison with the Seven Dials or Spitalfields, had it been only clean--there was very little light, for the window, which was well down below the surface of the pavement, had not a whole pane in it, and the broken ones had been stuffed up with old rags which were very protuberant indeed. That window alone would show that the menage had not been a judicious one. "He was a quiet man," said Honora, "and gave trouble to no one. He and his wife never had a word." The gossips all believed that the story of the throwing the knife was true, notwithstanding the medical evidence went against it. The boy of twelve, who provoked the father to throw the knife, was evidently the incubus of the wretched home. "Almost before the breath was out of his mother, that boy was searching about the bed to see if he could find any ha'pence," said Honora. That boy was evidently not satisfactory. His evidence was refused by the Coroner, because he could not read or write. But then what had been the child's surroundings? They have been described above. The man himself had a patriarchal family of seven, from a girl of seventeen down to a baby of two, and all, as we have seen, slept in one room, though there were two, and though a bucket of whitewash would have made the pair habitable, besides giving the lad some useful employment.