gives access to the iron gate--with every villainy of life in action close
on death, and every poisonous element of death in action close on life;
here they lower our dear brother down a foot or two; here sow him in
corruption to be raised in corruption; an avenging ghost at many a
sick-bedside; a shameful testimony to future ages how civilization and
barbarism walked this boastful island together."

The exact situation of the graveyard is not defined in the novel; but it
was evidently near Lincoln's Inn, and Mr. Winter told us, in one of his
delightful London letters, that it was also near Drury Lane. So strangely
hidden away is it among close and dirty houses that it was only after
three long searches through all the courts thereabouts that I found the
"reeking little tunnel," and twice I passed the entrance without observing
it. Opening out of Drury Lane, at the back and side of the theater, is a
network of narrow, flagged passages built up with tall houses. There are
rag and waste-paper shops in this retreat, two or three dreadful little
greengrocers' stalls, a pawnbroker's, a surprizing number of cobblers, and
in the core of the place, where the alley widens into the semblance of a
dwarfed court, a nest of dealers in theatrical finery, dancing-shoes,
pasteboard rounds of beef and cutlets, stage armor, and second-hand
play-books. Between Marquis Court on the one hand, Russell Court on the
other, and a miserable alley called Cross Court which connects them, is
what appears at first sight to be a solid block of tenements. The
graveyard is in the very heart of this populous block. The door of one of
the houses stood open, and through a barred staircase window at the back
of the entry I caught a glimpse of a patch of grass--a sight so strange in
this part of London that I went around to the other side of the block to
examine further.

There I found the "reeking little tunnel." It is merely a stone-paved