mocked "society," and laid snares for the destruction of its darlings, had mothers, perhaps, even now weeping for them in secret? As he thought of these things he felt as if he could wander, like Jonah, through the streets, preaching the doom of this city of Sodom, whose streets already savoured of the bottomless pit. Thoughts of this kind were brought home to him with terrible force one night that he saw Adelaide Codling. He was standing watching the play-goers leaving Drury Lane, when his eye suddenly caught the face of that girl amid a group of women and "swells," amongst the latter of whom was Captain Wiseman. She was showily dressed, and had a profusion of glaring jewellery scattered about her person, and she was talking fast, and laughing in a loud, defiant sort of way. But Wanless could see that she was not happy. As she drew near where he stood he could mark the restlessness of her eye, and the nervous boldness of her manner, and he pitied her. Is this what she has come to already? he thought to himself, and involuntarily shivered. Ah! if his own sweet lass was now like this, could he reclaim her? Would it not be too late? Adelaide Codling passed on, unconscious of the presence of her fellow-villager, saw not the pleading look that crossed his face, the eager step forward he took as if to speak with her. She entered a cab with Wiseman and two others, and disappeared from sight. The eagerness of Thomas to find his lost one was intensified after that night. Hardly a night-watchman in all the district escaped his importunities, and from most of them the old man met with a rough kindness that soothed him even in his absorbing grief. One old sergeant he met in the Strand, and who had more than once listened to his descriptions and his queries, advised him to alter his beat. "There are a great many haunts of streetwalkers," he said, "besides the Strand and the Haymarket. Why not try the south side of the river, or up Islington way? There is the East-end, too, and Oxford Street and Holborn. Yes, none knew where a girl may get to, once she cuts adrift in London. Such heaps of them takes to the streets nowadays, that you can find some in every thoroughfare in London." Wanless felt the observation true, alas! too true, but what could he do? His means would not allow him to search the whole city. He took a wider range, however, going by turns to one part of the town, now another, sometimes as far as the Angel and Upper Street, Islington, sometimes south to the Elephant and Castle, and the vice haunts of Walworth and the Borough. Occasionally, too, he searched the bridges across the river, but always with a sort of dread that his doing so was a confession that he believed his girl capable of drowning herself. CHAPTER XVII. HAS IN IT, ALAS! NOTHING THAT IS NEW.