The immediate object he had in view was to gain an entrance into the house of Samuel Boyd, and this must be done to-night. Whatever discoveries he made there, or if he made none, the ground would to some extent be cleared. To accomplish his purpose he required a rope, with a grapnel at the end of it, strong enough to bear a man's weight. His funds were low. Of the sovereign Uncle Rob had given him, 3s. 6d. had gone for a week's rent, and 2s. for food; he had 14s. 6d. left. Knowing that there was a chance of picking up in some second-hand shop a rope and grapnel for half the money which they would cost new, he turned down the meanest streets, where humble dealers strove to eke out a living. He passed a wardrobe shop in which male and female attire of the lowest kind was exposed for sale; a rag and bone shop, stuffed with articles fit for the dunghill, and over the door of which an Aunt Sally in a perpetual slate of strangulation was spinning round and round to the tune of a March wind; a fried fish shop through the window of which he saw a frowzy, perspiring woman frying penny pieces (heads), three halfpenny pieces (tails), and two penny pieces (middles); more wardrobe shops, more fried fish shops, more rag and bone shops, with black dolls spinning and strangling. In one of these he chanced upon the very thing he needed, and after a heated discussion with a dirty-faced old man in list slippers and a greasy skull cap, he issued from the fetid air within to the scarcely less fetid air without, with the rope and grapnel wrapped in the torn copy of an evening paper. Congratulating himself on his purchase he hurried along, and finding himself no farther than half a mile from Draper's Mews, he determined--having an hour or two to spare--to go to No. 7, where poor little Gracie and her mother resided, for the purpose of ascertaining whether anything had been discovered relating to the disappearance of Abel Death. CHAPTER XVII. THE LITTLE WASHERWOMAN.