"I thought I heard a cry," said the man addressed; "Nep must have thought so too, by the way he's going on; but I can see nothing. When I was out a few minutes ago I thought I saw something like a dog swimming near the Massilia, lying at anchor there, but it isn't there now. I doubt, after all, it may have been my fancy." "I wish you would keep your fancy to yourself, and not let it rouse me up," growled his mate. "One don't get too much rest in this blessed place at the best of times." CHAPTER III. HOME, SWEET HOME. Fashion, amidst the innumerable changes which she has insisted on, seems to have dealt lightly with Great Walpole-street. It may be that she has purposely left it untouched to remain an example of the heavy, solemn, solid style of a hundred years ago; a striking contrast to the "gardens," "crescents," "mansions," all stucco, plate-glass, and huge portico, of modern days; or it may be that finding it intractable, unalterable, unassailable, she has looked upon it as a relic of barbarism, and determined altogether to ignore its existence. However that may be, the street is little changed since the days of its erection; it still remains a long, and, to those gazing down it from either end, apparently interminable line of large, substantial, three-storied, dull-coloured brick houses, stretching from Chandos-square in the south to Guelph Park in the north, so long, so uniform, so unspeakably dreary, as to give colour to the assertion of a celebrated wit, who, on his death-bed moaning forth that "there is an end to all things," added feebly, "except Great Walpole-street."