And there among the crowd waiting, some of them in the last despair for a day's work, you may find many a mystery. All the men who wait in dumb patience through the long hours for the dock gates to open are not of the labouring class. The wreckage drifts to the dock gates for a job, because it is the great market for unskilled labour. I have seen in the crowd army men, 'varsity men, City men, actors, stockbrokers, and once a clergyman. To the dock gates there came a year or two back, day after day, a baronet. He was ill-clad, hungry, and broken-hearted. He got a job at last, only to be sent away before he had done a couple of hours' work, because he was too weak for the task he had undertaken in his last desperate strait. But as the dead of night yields to the dawn, there are brighter scenes to look upon than the listless, anxious-eyed crowd at the dock gates and the wharves of the great river of wealth. Soon after four, in many a little side street, the professional caller goes his round to rouse the sleepers who must be early astir, and by five there is a plentiful sprinkling of healthy-looking, clean-faced, stalwart men tramping along steadily, pipe in mouth and cloth-wrapped dinner in hand, wending their way to the labour of the day. The trains have begun to discharge their human freight. Over the bridges pours a steady stream of humanity, the steam whistles sound shrilly on the morning air, the warning bells of the factories clang noisily. The rest of the night is over, the work of the day has begun, the evil-doer has slunk away into the darkness, and the honest breadwinners go cheerfully to their work, looking the whole world in the face. CHAPTER XXIV--THE UNDIVULGED SECRET _A lie, then eternity--A promise made to the dying--Insurance money tempts them--"Have not betrayed"--The innocent who die for the guilty--The girl who lives as a boy_ |AS the world knows nothing of its greatest men, so the world knows nothing of its greatest mysteries. No hint or rumour of them ever reaches the public ear. There are strange things happening every day in this vast, mysterious world that we call London of which no word will ever be spoken. One or two human beings will know the secret, but it will remain hidden away in their hearts to the end. Sometimes from the lips of a dying man or woman comes a confession that startles and shocks the few interested relatives gathered round the bedside. Sometimes even in these deathbed revelations--the last despairing effort of the burthened conscience to find relief while still a flicker of life remains--there is still a reticence and a reservation. The nearest and dearest are not trusted with the secret, even in that supreme hour. The full confession is made only to the priest, upon whose lips is the seal of silence.