ring, 'You're one o' the cussed body-snatchers; I
know you: you belong to the Rose Alley "Forty Thieves." You'll
swing--every man Jack o' ye'll swing yet, mind if you don't.'

At the sight of the squalid house in which Winifred had lived and
died I passed into a new world of horror. Dead matter had become
conscious, and for a second or two it was not the human being before
me, but the rusty iron, the broken furniture, the great patches of
brick and dirty mortar where the plaster had fallen from the
walls,--it was these which seemed to have life--a terrible life--and
to be talking to me, telling me what I dared not listen to about the
triumph of evil over good. I knew that the woman was still speaking,
but for a time I heard no sound--my senses could receive no
impressions save from the sinister eloquence of the dead and yet
living matter around me. Not an object there that did not seem
charged with the wicked message of the heartless Fates.

At length, and as I stood upon the doorstep, a trembling, a mighty
expectance, seized me like an ague-fit; and I heard myself saying, 'I
am come to see the body, Mrs. Gudgeon.' Then I saw her peer,
blinking, into my face, as she said,

'Oh, oh, it's _you_, is it? It's one o' the lot as keeps the
studeros, is it?--the cussed Chelsea lot as killed her. I recklet yer
a-starin' at the goddess Joker! So you've come to see my poor
darter's body, are you? How werry kind, to be sure! Pray come in,
gentleman, an' pray let the beautiful goddess Joker be perlite an'
show sich a nice kind wisiter the way upstairs.'

She took a candle, and with a mincing, mocking movement, curtseying
low at every step, she backed before me, and then stood waiting at
the foot of the staircase with a drunken look of satire on her
features.

'Pray go upstairs fust, gentleman,' said she; 'I can't think o' goin'
up fust, an' lettin' my darter's kind wisiter foller behind like a
sarvint. I 'opes we knows our manners better nor that comes to in
Primrose Court.'

'None of this foolery now, woman,' said I. 'There's a time for
everything, you know.'

'How right he is!' she exclaimed, nodding to the flickering candle
in her hand. 'There's a time for everything an' this is the time for
makin' a peep-show of my pore darter's body. Oh, yes!'

I mounted a shaky staircase, the steps of which were, some of them,
so broken away that the ascent was no easy matter. The miserable
light from the woman's candle, as I entere