d a hansom
to take him to the Tower, for which service he paid a careless two
shillings. The driver showed discipline, and concealed his emotions.
_He_ wasn't going to let out that it was a double fare, and impair
a fountain of wealth for other charioteers to come. Not he!

The fare enjoyed himself evidently at the Tower. He saw everything
he could be admitted to--the Beauchamp Tower for sixpence, and the
Jewel-house for sixpence. And he gave uncalled-for gratuities. When
he had thoroughly enjoyed all the dungeons and all the torture-relics,
and all the memories of Harrison Ainsworth's romance, read in youth
and never forgotten, he told another hansom to drive him across the
Tower Bridge, and not go too fast.

As he crossed the Bridge he looked at his watch. It was half-past
twelve. He would have time to get back before half-past one to a
restaurant he had made a mental note of near the Bank, and still to
allow the cabby to drive on a bit through the transpontine and
interesting regions of Rotherhithe and Cherry Garden Pier. It was so
unlike anything he had been seeing lately. None the worse for the
latter, in some respects. So, at least, thought the fare.

For he had the good, or ill, fortune to strike on a rich vein of
so-called life in a London slum. Shrieks of fury, terror, pain
were coming out of an archway that led, said an inscription, into
Livermore's Rents, 1808. Public opinion, outside those Rents, ascribed
them to the fact that Salter had been drinking. He was on to that pore
wife of his again, like last week. Half killed her, he did, then! But
he was a bad man to deal with, and public opinion wouldn't go down
that court if I was you.

"But you're not, you see!" said the fare, who had sought this
information. "You stop here, my lad, till I come back." This to the
cabman, who sees him, not without misgivings about a source of income,
plunge into the filthy and degraded throng that is filling the court,
and elbow his way to the scene of excitement.

"_He's_ all right!" said that cabby. "I'll put a tenner on him, any
Sunday morning"--a figure of speech we cannot explain.

From his elevation above the crowd he can see a good deal of what goes
on, and guess the rest. Of what he hears, no phrase could be written
without blanks few readers could fill in, and for the meaning of which
no equivalent can even be hinted. The actual substance of the
occurrence, that filters through the cries of panic and of some wo