d stepped out merrily. At the
bottom they entered a street full of black brick warehouses with cranes
at work, and huge carts with ponderous horses. "An antediluvian breed!"
whispered Lady Betty. They strolled along, peering into dim doorways at
vast interiors where a strange universe of life flourished in the glooms
amid prodigious collections of barrels and boxes.

"We are almost on Tower Hill," he said suddenly.

"An unexpected fantasy!" she exclaimed, as the Tower of London itself
came into view at the end of the narrow street, the grey far-stretching
ramparts looming up ghost-like and romantic. "A mediaeval mirage amid all
this grimy commerce. I wonder if it will vanish presently! But let us
try the opposite direction now--are we not vowed to-day to the
unfamiliar and unknown?"

They retraced their steps, and, ere long, lighted on an iron gate that
led visibly to the water-side.

"The gate is inviting," she said. "I hope it isn't forbidden."

"Ah, here is a notice. I see we shall not be trespassers."

They entered, and, passing through the preliminary alley, found
themselves on a broad, open gravelled space beyond which flowed the
water. Save for a couple of pigeons wandering about, they had the place
all to themselves.

"This is a discovery," declared Lady Betty. "It is as interesting here
in its way as the Rialto at Venice."

And indeed they had reason to admire. To the right lay the Bridge of
Bridges, whose endlessly rolling traffic was at this distance softened
to an artistic suggestion that by no means disturbed their sense of
solitude. At the adjoining wharf on the left a Dutch boat was being
unladen, actively, yet with a strange sense of stillness and calm. And
over all the river and shipping hung a faint grey-blue mist, muffling
and enveloping all things out of proportion to its density, and
absorbing the sunlight into a haze that already seemed to foretell the
chills of the coming twilight of the winter's day. They saw the sun, a
large red ball, hanging extraordinarily low in the sky over a long squat
warehouse with symmetrical rows of windows. And across the river, under
the shadow of the opposite structures, lay strange families of craft and
barges, moored in the water, or high on the mud; rusty and silent, some
half-broken up, some swinging lazily, touched with the mellow decay of
the centuries.

Lady Betty thought it would be ideal to stay here awhile, so they
settled down on one of the gard