oach, which Jonson requested me to
pay, and walked on.

"Tell me frankly, Sir," said Job, "do you know where you are?"

"Not in the least," replied I, looking wistfully up a long, dull,
ill-lighted street.

Job rolled his sinister eye towards me with a searching look, and then
turning abruptly to the right, penetrated into a sort of covered lane,
or court, which terminated in an alley, that brought us suddenly to a
stand of three coaches; one of these Job hailed--we entered it--a secret
direction was given, and we drove furiously on, faster than I should
think the crazy body of hackney chariot ever drove before. I observed,
that we had now entered a part of the town, which was singularly
strange to me; the houses were old, and for the most part of the meanest
description; we appeared to me to be threading a labyrinth of alleys;
once, I imagined that I caught, through a sudden opening, a glimpse of
the river, but we passed so rapidly, that my eye might have deceived
me. At length we stopped: the coachman was again dismissed, and I again
walked onwards, under the guidance, and almost at the mercy of my honest
companion.

Jonson did not address me--he was silent and absorbed, and I had
therefore full leisure to consider my present situation. Though (thanks
to my physical constitution) I am as callous to fear as most men, a few
chilling apprehensions, certainly flitted across my mind, when I looked
round at the dim and dreary sheds--houses they were not--which were
on either side of our path; only here and there, a single lamp shed a
sickly light upon the dismal and intersecting lanes (though lane is
too lofty a word), through which our footsteps woke a solitary sound.
Sometimes this feeble light was altogether withheld, and I could
scarcely catch even the outline of my companion's muscular frame.
However, he strode on through the darkness, with the mechanical rapidity
of one to whom every stone is familiar. I listened eagerly for the sound
of the watchman's voice, in vain--that note was never heard in those
desolate recesses. My ear drank in nothing but the sound of our own
footsteps, or the occasional burst of obscene and unholy merriment from
some half-closed hovel, where infamy and vice were holding revels.
Now and then, a wretched thing, in the vilest extreme of want,
and loathsomeness, and rags, loitered by the unfrequent lamps, and
interrupted our progress with solicitations, which made my blood run
cold. By deg