Dick soon had fallen fortunes of his own to think of. He knew not how to attempt to make his money multiply; or rather he devised in his mind so many methods that he could not confine his thoughts to any one of them. Thus rendered inert by his very versatility, he saw his money go for mere necessities, and at last he had to seek still cheaper lodgings, which he found in Green Arbor Court, a place redeemed in his eyes by the fact that Oliver Goldsmith had once lived there. It was not a locality designed to increase his cheerfulness. He had a narrow, bare room, high up in a dirty, squalid house; from his window he could see old clothes flying from countless windows and lines; and the sounds most common to his ears were the voices of washerwomen laughing or quarrelling and of children shouting or squalling. Not far in one direction was Newgate Prison, and not far in another was that of the Fleet. In going to Fleet Street, he had to descend Breakneck Stairs,--which numbered thirty-two and were in two steep flights and led him to the edge of Fleet Ditch,--traverse a narrow street, and go through Fleet Market. This was a route that Dick often took, for he preferred still to dine in and about Fleet Street, though no longer at the Grecian Coffee-house or Dick's or the Mitre Tavern, to all which places he had resorted while lodging in George Street, but at the cheaper places,--Clifton's Eating-house, in Butcher Row, for one. Sometimes his meal consisted solely of a pot of beer at the Goat Ale House in Shire Lane. He fell at last to the down-stairs eating-houses, where his table-mates were hackney coachmen, servants poorly paid or unemployed, and poverty-stricken devils and unsuccessful rascals of every sort. It was here that his fortune took an upward course again. Appealed to, one day, in a low tavern, to settle a card dispute between two bloated, sore-faced fellows who had come to the point of accusing each other of being, one a footpad and the other a grave robber, Dick acted the umpire to the satisfaction of both, and then went on to do a few astonishing things with their cards. Others in the tavern gathered round him, until presently, seeing the crowd and the interest both increasing, Dick observed that his time was valuable and that he could not afford to show any more skill for nothing. But the body-stealer refused to receive the dirty cards handed back to him by Dick, and the footpad speedily took up a collection, with such a "money-or-your-life" air that a hatful of greasy coins was soon raised to induce Dick to go on with his tricks. As many of these tricks were of old Tom's invention, they differed from those with which the London scamps were familiar.