roofs of the Woolwich houses. Down in the long,
brick-lined streets all was sodden and greasy and cheerless. From the
high dark buildings of the arsenal came the whirr of many wheels, the
thudding of weights, and the buzz and babel of human toil. Beyond, the
dwellings of the workingmen, smoke-stained and unlovely, radiated away
in a lessening perspective of narrowing road and dwindling wall.

There were few folk in the streets, for the toilers had all been
absorbed since break of day by the huge smoke-spouting monster, which
sucked in the manhood of the town, to belch it forth weary and
work-stained every night. Little groups of children straggled to
school, or loitered to peep through the single, front windows at the
big, gilt-edged Bibles, balanced upon small, three-legged tables, which
were their usual adornment. Stout women, with thick, red arms and
dirty aprons, stood upon the whitened doorsteps, leaning upon their
brooms, and shrieking their morning greetings across the road. One
stouter, redder, and dirtier than the rest, had gathered a small knot
of cronies around her and was talking energetically, with little shrill
titters from her audience to punctuate her remarks.

"Old enough to know better!" she cried, in answer to an exclamation
from one of the listeners. "If he hain't no sense now, I 'specs he
won't learn much on this side o' Jordan. Why, 'ow old is he at all?
Blessed if I could ever make out."

"Well, it ain't so hard to reckon," said a sharp-featured pale-faced
woman with watery blue eyes. "He's been at the battle o' Waterloo, and
has the pension and medal to prove it."

"That were a ter'ble long time agone," remarked a third. "It were
afore I were born."

"It were fifteen year after the beginnin' of the century," cried a
younger woman, who had stood leaning against the wall, with a smile of
superior knowledge upon her face. "My Bill was a-saying so last
Sabbath, when I spoke to him o' old Daddy Brewster, here."

"And suppose he spoke truth, Missus Simpson, 'ow long agone do that
make it?"

"It's eighty-one now," said the original speaker, checking off the
years upon her coarse red fingers, "and that were fifteen. Ten and
ten, and ten, and ten, and ten--why, it's only sixty-and-six year, so
he ain't so old after all."

"But he weren't a newborn babe at the battle, silly!" cried the young
woman with a chuckle. "S'pose he were only twenty, then he couldn't be
less than six-and-eigh