ed
imagination.

The back part of Walworth, at its greatest distance from town, is a
straggling miserable place enough, even in these days; but,
five-and-thirty years ago, the greater portion of it was little better
than a dreary waste, inhabited by a few scattered people of questionable
character, whose poverty prevented their living in any better
neighbourhood, or whose pursuits and mode of life rendered its solitude
desirable. Very many of the houses which have since sprung up on all
sides, were not built until some years afterwards; and the great majority
even of those which were sprinkled about, at irregular intervals, were of
the rudest and most miserable description.

The appearance of the place through which he walked in the morning, was
not calculated to raise the spirits of the young surgeon, or to dispel
any feeling of anxiety or depression which the singular kind of visit he
was about to make, had awakened. Striking off from the high road, his
way lay across a marshy common, through irregular lanes, with here and
there a ruinous and dismantled cottage fast falling to pieces with decay
and neglect. A stunted tree, or pool of stagnant water, roused into a
sluggish action by the heavy rain of the preceding night, skirted the
path occasionally; and, now and then, a miserable patch of garden-ground,
with a few old boards knocked together for a summer-house, and old
palings imperfectly mended with stakes pilfered from the neighbouring
hedges, bore testimony, at once to the poverty of the inhabitants, and
the little scruple they entertained in appropriating the property of
other people to their own use. Occasionally, a filthy-looking woman
would make her appearance from the door of a dirty house, to empty the
contents of some cooking utensil into the gutter in front, or to scream
after a little slip-shod girl, who had contrived to stagger a few yards
from the door under the weight of a sallow infant almost as big as
herself; but, scarcely anything was stirring around: and so much of the
prospect as could be faintly traced through the cold damp mist which hung
heavily over it, presented a lonely and dreary appearance perfectly in
keeping with the objects we have described.

After plodding wearily through the mud and mire; making many inquiries
for the place to which he had been directed; and receiving as many
contradictory and unsatisfactory replies in return; the young man at
length arrived before the house