The first thing he had to report was that an insinuation which had been spread abroad against Baskette was actually working in his favour. It had been thrown out that he was upon too familiar terms with a certain lady, singer and actress, the fame of whose wonderful beauty was sullied with suspicions of her frailty. With a certain section of the people, who prided themselves upon being “English to the backbone,” this was resented as unfair. With a far larger portion it was at once believed, and, amid sly nods and winks, taken as another proof that Baskette was one of themselves. Aymer wandered about the city; he saw its horrors, its crime. At such a period the sin, the wickedness and misery which commonly lurks in corners, came out and flaunted in the daylight. A great horror fell upon him—a horror of the drunkenness, the cursing, the immorality, the fierce brutishness. He shuddered. Not that he was himself pure, but he was sensitive and quick to understand, to see beneath the surface. He was of an age when the mind deals with broad generalities. If this was the state of one city only—then, poor England! His imagination pictured a time when this monster might be uppermost. One night he ascended the tower of a great brewery and looked down upon the city, all flaring with gas. Up from the depth came the shouting, the hum of thousands, the tramp of the multitudes. He looked afar. The horizon was bright with blazing fires—the sky red with a crimson and yellow glow. Not a star, was visible, a dense cloud of smoke hid everything. The iron furnaces shot forth their glowing flames, the engines puffed and snorted. He thought of Violet and trembled: when the monster was let loose, what then? He descended and wandered away he knew not exactly whither, but he found himself towards midnight mixed in a crowd around the police station. Jammed in amid, the throng he was shoved against the wall, but fortunately a lamp-post preserved him from the crush. However, he could not move. The gas-light fell upon the wall and lit up the proclamations of “V.R.”—the advertisements of missing and lost, the descriptions of persons who were wanted, etc. One sheet, half-defaced with the wind and rain and mud splashed against it, caught his eye— “Escaped,” so ran the fragment, “from... mingham Asylum, a lunatic of homicidal tendencies... Stabbed a warder... killed his wife by driving a nail into her head... Is at large. His description—Long grey hair, restless eye, peculiar ears, walks with a shambling gait, and has a melancholy expression of countenance. Plays fantastic airs upon a tin whistle, and is particularly fond of tinkering.” A new bill, “Two Hundred Pounds Reward,” for the apprehension of a defaulting bank manager, blotted out the rest.