People began to gather upon the bridge, seeming almost to spring up miraculously, and Lally, fearing questioning, or detention as witness of the suicide, arose and went back by the way she had come, up Wellington street, into the Strand. She was sufficiently herself by this time to know that she must seek shelter for the night; but where could she go? What respectable inn would give shelter to one so forlorn of aspect, so utterly alone as she? She would be driven forth as something disreputable and unclean, should she demand lodgings at such an inn. She had money in her pocket--the share Rufus had given her of the ten pounds his father had sent him--but she might almost as well have been penniless, since her money could not procure her respectable shelter for the night. There might be some home for friendly wanderers, some asylum for respectable women, where she could pass the dangerous hours of darkness, but she knew of none. Such asylums are generally for reclaimed women, not for those who have never gone astray. The omnibuses were still running, it not being yet midnight, and Lally being too tired to walk further, signalled an empty one and took her seat in it. A long ride followed over rough pavements, past dingy rows of shops and houses, past small villas in small gardens, looking like toy establishments, and through a more sparsely settled region. Lally, overcome with fatigue, dozed most of the time, and was rudely awakened from her slumbers by the stopping of the omnibus and the rough voice of the driver bidding her alight. She got out, feeling quite dazed, and saw that the omnibus had stopped at the end of its route, and that the horses were already unhitched and being led into the stable. She crept away, not knowing where to go, not even knowing where she was. Plodding on wearily, now and then clinging to some way-side fence or wall for a moment’s rest, she came out upon a wide, deserted heath, open to whoever might choose to camp upon it. This was Hampstead Heath. She walked out upon the turf for some distance, and lay down in the shelter of a furze patch, thinking she was going to die. The skies were dark above her, and all around her the black gloom brooded, covering her from the sight of any tramps who might be taking their sleep that summer night on that same broad common. And here Lally slept the sleep of utter weariness. She awakened at the dawn of the new day, and started up, with a wild look around her. There were donkeys of diminutive breed grazing around her, a few tramps rising lazily from the ground, and a score of industrious people, men, women, boys and girls, digging up groundsel, chickweed and other green weeds, to sell in the great city for the sustenance of birds.