from the house, and walked swiftly through the streets.
Remorse, fear, shame, all crowded on his mind. Stupefied with drink, and
bewildered with the scene he had just witnessed, he re-entered the tavern
he had quitted shortly before. Glass succeeded glass. His blood
mounted, and his brain whirled round. Death! Every one must die, and
why not _she_? She was too good for him; her relations had often told
him so. Curses on them! Had they not deserted her, and left her to
whine away the time at home? Well--she was dead, and happy perhaps. It
was better as it was. Another glass--one more! Hurrah! It was a merry
life while it lasted; and he would make the most of it.

Time went on; the three children who were left to him, grew up, and were
children no longer. The father remained the same--poorer, shabbier, and
more dissolute-looking, but the same confirmed and irreclaimable
drunkard. The boys had, long ago, run wild in the streets, and left him;
the girl alone remained, but she worked hard, and words or blows could
always procure him something for the tavern. So he went on in the old
course, and a merry life he led.

One night, as early as ten o'clock--for the girl had been sick for many
days, and there was, consequently, little to spend at the
public-house--he bent his steps homeward, bethinking himself that if he
would have her able to earn money, it would be as well to apply to the
parish surgeon, or, at all events, to take the trouble of inquiring what
ailed her, which he had not yet thought it worth while to do. It was a
wet December night; the wind blew piercing cold, and the rain poured
heavily down. He begged a few halfpence from a passer-by, and having
bought a small loaf (for it was his interest to keep the girl alive, if
he could), he shuffled onwards as fast as the wind and rain would let
him.

At the back of Fleet-street, and lying between it and the water-side, are
several mean and narrow courts, which form a portion of Whitefriars: it
was to one of these that he directed his steps.

The alley into which he turned, might, for filth and misery, have
competed with the darkest corner of this ancient sanctuary in its
dirtiest and most lawless time. The houses, varying from two stories in
height to four, were stained with every indescribable hue that long
exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart to tenements
composed originally of the roughest and coarsest materials. The window