which a struggle is foreseen at his age, that John buttoned his coat and took his hat. He felt that ‘they’ (though he had not the least notion who _they_ might be) would not have an easy bargain of him. He went out without even being remarked. No ‘Where are you going?’ ‘When will you come back?’ to impede his liberty. That fact also went to his heart a little. He had felt his loneliness very forlorn--now he felt it exciting, exhilarating. He set his hat firmly on his head, and drew a long breath when he felt the fresh air of the night, so different from that of any parlour, encircle him with its coolness and vastness. That, too, has an intoxication in it which everything that is young acknowledges. The air may be sober in the morning--it is like wine at night. The darkness has a mystery, a magic in it--the lights twinkling through it--the world made into something ideal, in which miracles are. John stood still for a moment at the door, realising that he was there, that he was unshackled--his own master--and then, drawn by the great voice that called and called him, he turned his face towards the distant blazing of the lights, and set out--to discover that new world. To discover London! how many do it every day, with hearts beating high, with hopes immeasurable, which so often collapse and come to nothing; but this is not the time for moralising. John set out. His way began in the darkness of this little street, with its little houses, faced by the great sombre shadow of the hospital, which shut out the air from it and the sky. He plunged into the darkness at first, making his way between rows of insignificant buildings, with a feeble shop here and there flashing its faint illumination, and then, with a great sweep of fresh air seizing him, came out upon the bridge. The sky was full of the clearness of spring, though there was no moon. The river flowed dark and silent below, faintly visible further up the stream in pale streaks of reflection, across which would rise a dark and ghostly shadow of something floating, a barge, a heavy blackness in the middle of the faint light; but lamps blazing overhead, the glare of gas, and here and there the chill contradictory artificial moon of the electric light ‘swearing’ horribly, as the French say, with all the yellow lamps around. The murmur of sound grew and grew as the boy went on; it was a rhythmic roar as of waves beating against a shore, or the rush of a prodigious waterfall, a great moral Niagara, bigger than any physical falls, however gigantic. It was made up of the sounds of carriages of every description, of voices, the hum of the crowd constantly broken by some shrill interruption of a cry or shout, which gave emphasis to the general continual, unfailing current of sound. He hurried along, quickening his pace, led by it as if it had been a syren’s song.