at least
Baalzebub is mindful; for "one is taken and another left."

Still, there is a method in his seeming madness. His eye falls on a
blind alley, running back from the main street, backed at the upper end
by a high wall of rock. There is a God-send for him--a devil's-send,
rather, to speak plain truth: and in he dashes; and never leaves that
court, let brave Tom wrestle with him as he may, till he has taken one
from every house.

That court belonged to Treluddra, the old fish-jowder. He must do
something. Thurnall attacks him; Major Campbell, Headley; the neighbours
join in the cry; for there is no mistaking cause and effect there, and
no one bears a great love to him; besides, terrified and
conscience-stricken men are glad of a scapegoat; and some of those who
were his stoutest backers in the vestry are now, in their terror, the
loudest against him, ready to impute the whole cholera to him. Indeed,
old Beer is ready to declare that it was Treluddra's fish-heaps which
poisoned him and his: so, all but mobbed, the old sinner goes up--to set
the houses to rights? No; to curse the whole lot for a set of pigs, and
order them to clean the place out themselves, or he will turn them into
the street. He is one of those base natures, whom fact only lashes into
greater fury,--a Pharaoh whose heart the Lord himself can only harden;
such men there are, and women, too, grown grey in lies, to reap at last
the fruit of lies. But he carries back with him to his fish-heaps a
little invisible somewhat which he did not bring; and ere nightfall he
is dead hideously; he, his wife, his son:--and now the Beers are down
again, and the whole neighbourhood of Treluddra's house is wild with
disgusting agony.

Now the fiend is hovering round the fish-curing houses: but turns back,
disgusted with the pure scent of the tan-yard, where not hides, but nets
are barked; skips on board of a brig in the quay-pool; and a poor
collier's 'prentice dies, and goes to his own place. What harm has he
done? Is it his sin that, ill-fed and well-beaten daily, he has been
left to sleep on board, just opposite the sewer's mouth, in a berth some
four feet long by two feet high and broad?

Or is it that poor girl's sin who was just now in Heale's shop, talking
to Miss Heale safe and sound, that she is carried back into it, in
half-an-hour's time, fainting, shrieking? One must draw a veil over the
too hideous details.

No, not her fault: but there, at least, t