"Yes, Thomas, I believe that's true of him," said Mr Maltby; "he has been always very civil and obliging to me. But, as you know, I have tried more than once to draw him out of the slough of intemperance on to firm ground, but in vain. I trust, however, that God may bless your loving endeavours to bring him now over to the right side." "I trust so too, sir." The house where Barnes lived was in one of the worst and dirtiest parts of Crossbourne; and as some of the inhabitants, whose temperament inclined to the gloomy, declared Crossbourne to be the dirtiest town in England, the situation of Jim's dwelling was certainly not likely to be favourable to either health or comfort. There are streets in most towns of any considerable size which persons who are fortunate enough to live in more agreeable localities are quite content with just looking down, and then passing on, marvelling, it may be, to themselves how such processes as washing and cooking can ever be carried on with the slightest prospect of success in the midst of such grimy and unsavoury surroundings. It was in such a street that James Barnes and his family existed, rather than lived; for life is too vigorous a term to be applied to the time dragged on by those who were unfortunate enough to breathe so polluted an atmosphere. There are some places which, in their very decay, remind you of better times now past and gone. It was not so with the houses in these streets; they looked rather as if originally built of poverty-stricken and dilapidated materials. And yet none of them were really old, but the blight of neglect was heavy upon them. Nearly at the bottom of one of these streets was the house inhabited by the dismissed railway porter, and to this Thomas Bradly now made his way. Outside the front door stood a knot of women with long pipes in their mouths, bemoaning Jim's dismissal with his wife, and suggesting some of those original grounds of consolation which, to persons in a higher walk of life, would rather aggravate than lessen the trial. Two of the youngest children of the family, divested of all superfluous clothing, were giving full play to their ill-fed limbs in the muddy gutter, dividing their time between personal assaults on each other, and splashings on the by-standers from the liquid soil in which they were revelling, being occasionally startled into a momentary silence by a violent cuff from their mother when they became more than ordinarily uproarious.