the squealing and scuffling of the rats. The
melancholy lapping of the water frequently reached my ears, and a more
or less continuous din from the wharves and workshops upon the further
bank of the Thames; but in the narrow, dingy streets immediately
surrounding the house, quietude reigned and no solitary footstep
disturbed it.

Once, looking down in the direction of the bridge, I gave a great
start, for a black patch of shadow moved swiftly across the path and
merged into the other shadows bordering a high wall. My heart leapt
momentarily, then, in another instant, the explanation of the mystery
became apparent--in the presence of a gaunt and prowling cat. Bestowing
a suspicious glance upward in my direction, the animal slunk away toward
the path bordering the cutting.

By a devious route amid ghostly gasometers I had crept to my post in
the early dusk, before the moon was risen, and already I was heartily
weary of my passive part in the affair of the night. I had never before
appreciated the multitudinous sounds, all of them weird and many of
them horrible, which are within the compass of those great black rats
who find their way to England with cargoes from Russia and elsewhere.
From the rafters above my head, from the wall recesses about me, from
the floor beneath my feet, proceeded a continuous and nerve-shattering
concert, an unholy symphony which seemingly accompanied the eternal
dance of the rats.

Sometimes a faint splash from below would tell of one of the revelers
taking the water, but save for the more distant throbbing of riverside
industry, and rarer note of shipping, the mad discords of this rat
saturnalia alone claimed the ear.

The hour was nigh now, when matters should begin to develop. I
followed the chimes from the clock of some church nearby--I have never
learnt its name; and was conscious of a thrill of excitement when
they warned me that the hour was actually arrived....

A strange figure appeared noiselessly, from I knew not where, and
stood fully within view upon the bridge crossing the cutting, peering
to right and left, in an attitude of listening. It was the figure of
a bedraggled old woman, gray-haired, and carrying a large bundle tied
up in what appeared to be a red shawl. Of her face I could see little,
since it was shaded by the brim of her black bonnet, but she rested
her bundle upon the low wall of the bridge, and to my intense
surprise, sat down upon it!

She evidently intend