The bustle of business, and the smile of pleasure,--the peaceful citizen, and the gay soldier,--the splendid shop, and the itinerant pastry-stall,--the gorgeous equipage, and the humble market-cart,--the palaces of nobles, and the hovels of the poor,--the psalm from the chapel, and the shout of laughter from the tavern,--the dandies lounging in the west-end streets, and the paupers cleansing away the mud,--the funeral procession, and the bridal cavalcade,--the wealthy and high-born lady whose reputation is above all cavil, and the lost girl whose shame is below all notice,--the adventurer who defends his honour with a duel, and the poor tradesman whom unavoidable bankruptcy has branded as a rogue,--the elegantly-clad banker whose insolvency must soon transpire, and the ragged old miser whose wealth is not suspected,--the monuments of glory, and the hospitals of the poor,--the temples where men adore a God with affectation, and the shrines at which they lose their gold to a deity whom they adore without affectation,--in a word, grandeur and squalor, wealth and misery, virtue and vice,--honesty which has never been tried, and crime which yielded to the force of irresistible circumstances,--all the features, all the characteristics, all the morals, of a great city, must occupy the attention of him who surveys London with microscopic eye. And what a splendid subject for the contemplation of the moralist is a mighty city which, at every succeeding hour, presents a new phase of interest to the view;--in the morning, when only the industrious and the thrifty are abroad, and while the wealthy and the great are sleeping off the night's pleasure and dissipation:--at noon, when the streets are swarming with life, as if some secret source without the walls poured at that hour myriads of animated streams into the countless avenues and thoroughfares;--in the evening, when the men of pleasure again venture forth, and music, and dancing, and revelry prevail around;--and at night, when every lazar-house vomits forth its filth, every den lets loose its horrors, and every foul court and alley echoes to the footsteps of crime! It was about two o'clock in the morning, (three hours after the burglarious attempt upon the villa,) that a man, drenched by the rain which continued to pour in torrents, with his hat drawn over his eyes, and his hands thrust in his pockets to protect them against the cold, crept cautiously down West Street, from Smithfield, dodged past the policeman, and entered the old house which we have described at the opening of our narrative. Having closed and carefully bolted the front door, he hastily ascended to the room on the first floor where Walter Sydney had seen him and his companion conceal their plunder four years and four months previously. This man--so wet, so cold, and so miserable--was Bill Bolter, the murderer.