ng after such a one. She stood with arms akimbo
in the passage, and said she would raise the neighbourhood on him.
She was drunk, and dirty, as foul a thing as the eye could look upon;
every other word was an oath, and no phrase used by the lowest of
men in their lowest moments was too hot or too bad for her woman's
tongue; and yet there was the indignation of outraged virtue in her
demeanour and in her language, because this stranger had come to her
door asking after a girl who had been led astray. Our Vicar cared
nothing for the neighbourhood, and, indeed, cared very little for
the woman at all,--except in so far as she disgusted him; but he did
care much at finding that he could obtain no clue to her whom he was
seeking. The woman would not even tell him when the girl had left
her house, or give him any assistance towards finding her. He had at
first endeavoured to mollify the virago by offering to pay the amount
of any expenses which might have been left unsettled; but even on
this score he could obtain no consideration. She continued to revile
him, and he was obliged to leave her,--which he did, at last, with a
hurried step to avoid a quart pot which the woman had taken up to
hurl at his head, upon some comparison which he most indiscreetly
made between herself and poor Carry Brattle.

What should he do now? The only chance of finding the girl was, as he
thought, to go to the police-office. He was still in the lane, making
his way back to the street which would take him into the city,
when he was accosted by a little child. "You be the parson," said
the child. Mr. Fenwick owned that he was a parson. "Parson from
Bull'umpton?" said the child, inquiringly. Mr. Fenwick acknowledged
the fact. "Then you be to come with me." Whereupon Mr. Fenwick
followed the child, and was led into a miserable little court in
which population was squalid, thick, and juvenile. "She be here, at
Mrs. Stiggs's," said the child. Then the Vicar understood that he had
been watched, and that he was being taken to the place where she whom
he was seeking had found shelter.

CHAPTER XL.

TROTTER'S BUILDINGS.

In the back room up-stairs of Mr. Stiggs's house in Trotter's
Buildings the Vicar did find Carry Brattle, and he found also that
since her coming thither on the preceding evening,--for only on the
preceding evening had she been turned away from the Three Honest
Men,--one of Mrs. Stiggs's children had been on the look-out in the