long as the inhabitants of the little triangular "Square" could remember,
and if they had ever been vertical it was a very long time ago. They now
overhung the palings each at its own angle, and resembled nothing so
much as a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some
passer-by, yet never cutting off a tenant for the old house from the
stream of his fellows. Not that there was ever any great "stream" through
the square; the stream passed a furlong and more away, beyond the
intricacy of tenements and alleys and byways that had sprung up since the
old house had been built, hemming it in completely; and probably the
house itself was only suffered to stand pending the falling-in of a lease
or two, when doubtless a clearance would be made of the whole
neighbourhood.

It was of bloomy old red brick, and built into its walls were the crowns
and clasped hands and other insignia of insurance companies long since
defunct. The children of the secluded square had swung upon the low gate
at the end of the entrance-alley until little more than the solid top bar
of it remained, and the alley itself ran past boarded basement windows on
which tramps had chalked their cryptic marks. The path was washed and
worn uneven by the spilling of water from the eaves of the encroaching
next house, and cats and dogs had made the approach their own. The
chances of a tenant did not seem such as to warrant the keeping of the
"To Let" boards in a state of legibility and repair, and as a matter of
fact they were not so kept.

For six months Oleron had passed the old place twice a day or oftener, on
his way from his lodgings to the room, ten minutes' walk away, he had
taken to work in; and for six months no hatchet-like notice-board had
fallen across his path. This might have been due to the fact that he
usually took the other side of the square. But he chanced one morning to