It was a delightful summer evening, and East London was looking its brightest. The eight hours of daily toil were over, and the crowds of cheery-voiced and happy-faced working people were returning in merry groups to their respective homes, scattered here and there amid the splendid Co-operative Palaces that reared their decorated fronts to meet the last golden glories of the setting sun, and break the soft progress of the gentle evening breeze laden with the sweet scents of the myriad flowers blooming freshly amid the verdant _parterres_ and winding woodland walks by which they were divided and surrounded. Here a rippling fountain made silvery music in the air, while yonder the noisy brooklet could be traced cleaving its headlong way to the lovely Thames flowing seaward tranquilly beneath, its translucent surface being broken now and again only by the leap from an occasional seventy-pound salmon revelling for very joy in the highly hygienic quantity of the pure and crystal water in which he was existing. Above was the faultless deep-blue glory of an Italian sky. Beneath rare forest trees, amidst which the graceful oleander and wild tamarisk flourished with all their native strength, produced a grateful shade. So sparkling and smokeless was the pervading atmosphere that merely to inhale it was a physical pleasure. Sanitary and social science had indeed worked their wonders here. East London had become to all those who dwelt amid its fairy labyrinths a veritable earthly Paradise. And as he cast his shapely but workmanlike frame with an elegant ease on to one of the hundred comfortable lounges that at intervals fringed its green swards throughout their entire length and breadth, no one in the full flush of this glorious summer evening appreciated the fact more keenly than did JEREMIAH HALFINCH. "Ah! this is delicious!" he cried, with enthusiasm; "just a few moments' rest here to solve this problem, and then--_pour me rendre chez moi!_" He spoke with all the easy grace and perfect _ton_ of a West-End _raconteur_, and as he opened his basket of tools and produced from it a translation of a new work on German Philosophy, in the pages of which he was speedily engrossed, it was impossible not to be struck by his general appearance. His frame was that of an Herculean Apollo, while his head, with its finely-chiselled features and long tawny moustache, nobly set upon his shoulders, might have belonged to a Captain in the Guards. There was in his eyes something of the look of an intelligent Chief Justice, and whenever he moved it was with all the commanding dignity of a Lord Mayor. In short, it needed only a glance at JEREMIAH HALFINCH to set him down for what he was,--a fair specimen of the average type of the working-man of the day.