uch a trifle as this!

It was thus with him; it is thus with all of us. Our faculties are never
more completely at the mercy of the smallest interests of our being,
than when they appear to be most fully absorbed by the mightiest. And
it is well for us that there exists this seeming imperfection in our
nature. The first cure of many a grief, after the hour of parting, or in
the house of death, has begun, insensibly to ourselves, with the first
moment when we were betrayed into thinking of so little a thing even as
a daily meal.

The rain which had accompanied the thaw was falling faster and faster;
inside the house was dead silence, and outside it damp desolation, as
Zack opened the street door, and, without hesitating a moment, dashed
out desperately through mud and wet, to cast himself loose on the
thronged world of London as a fugitive from his own home.

He paused before he took the turning out of the square; the
recollections of weeks, months, years past, all whirling through his
memory in a few moments of time. He paused, looking through the damp,
foggy atmosphere at the door which he had just left--never, it might be,
to approach it again; then moved away, buttoned his coat over his chest
with trembling, impatient fingers, and saying to himself, "I've done it,
and nothing can undo it now," turned his back resolutely on Baregrove
Square.

CHAPTER III. THE SEARCH BEGUN.

The street which Mat had chosen for his place of residence in London,
was situated in a densely populous, and by no means respectable
neighborhood. In Kirk Street the men of the fustian-jacket and seal-skin
cap clustered tumultuous round the lintels of the gin-shop doors. Here
ballad-bellowing, and organ grinding, and voices of costermongers,
singing of poor men's luxuries, never ceased all through the hum of
day, and penetrated far into the frowzy repose of latest night. Here, on
Saturday evenings especially, the butcher smacked with appreciating
hand the fat carcasses that hung around him; and flourishing his steel,
roared aloud to every woman who passed the shop door with a basket, to
come in and buy--buy--buy! Here, with foul frequency, the language of
the natives was interspersed with such words as reporters indicate in
the newspapers by an expressive black line; and on this "beat," more
than on most others, the night police were chosen from men of mighty
strength to protect the sober part of the street community, and of
notable cu