What a man feels a child feels still more.

The uneasiness of nocturnal fear, increased by the spectral houses,
increased the weight of the sad burden under which he was struggling.

He entered Conycar Lane, and perceived at the end of that passage the
Backwater, which he took for the ocean. He no longer knew in what
direction the sea lay. He retraced his steps, struck to the left by
Maiden Street, and returned as far as St. Alban's Row.

There, by chance and without selection, he knocked violently at any
house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his
last energies, were jerky and without aim; now ceasing altogether for a
time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his fever
striking against the doors.

One voice answered.

That of Time.

Three o'clock tolled slowly behind him from the old belfry of St.
Nicholas.

Then all sank into silence again.

That no inhabitant should have opened a lattice may appear surprising.
Nevertheless that silence is in a great measure to be explained. We must
remember that in January 1790 they were just over a somewhat severe
outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of receiving sick
vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality everywhere. People would