Transcribed from the 1899 Bernhard Tauchnitz edition by Les Bowler. [Picture: Book cover] TAUCHNITZ EDITION. By the same Author, TALES OF MEAN STREETS 1 vol. A CHILD OF THE JAGO 1 vol. * * * * * TO LONDON TOWN * * * * * BY ARTHUR MORRISON, AUTHOR OF “A CHILD OF THE JAGO,” ETC. ETC. * * * * * _COPYRIGHT EDITION_. * * * * * LEIPZIG BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ 1899. * * * * * TO LADY DOROTHY NEVILL. * * * * * NOTE. I designed this story, and, indeed, began to write it, between the publication of _Tales of Mean Streets_ and that of _A Child of the Jago_, to be read together with those books: not that I pretend to figure in all three—much less in any one of them—a complete picture of life in the eastern parts of London, but because they are complementary, each to the two others. A. M. TO LONDON TOWN. I. THE afternoon had slumbered in the sun, but now the August air freshened with an awakening breath, and Epping Thicks stirred and whispered through a myriad leaves. Far away beyond the heaving greenwoods distant clouds floated flat on the upper air, and a richer gold grew over the hills as the day went westward. This way and that, between and about trees and undergrowth, an indistinct path went straggling by easy grades to the lower ground by Wormleyton Pits; an errant path whose every bend gave choice of green passes toward banks of heather and bracken. It was by this way that an old man and a crippled child had reached the Pits. He was a small old man, white-haired, and a trifle bent; but he went his way with a sturdy tread, satchel at side and butterfly-net in hand. As for the child, she too went sturdily enough, but she hung from a crutch by the right shoulder, and she moved with a jog and a swing. The hand that gripped the crutch gripped also a little bunch of meadowsweet, and the other clasped tight against her pinafore a tattered old book that would else have fallen to pieces. Once on the heathery slade, the old man lifted the strap over his head and put the satchel down by a tree clump at the wood’s edge.