some one or with each other. What startled me was
that, whereas the woman's cry came from the street south
of me, which I have called Fernando Street, the whole
crowd of men, as they howled and swore, were passing
along that street rapidly, and then stopped for an
instant, as if they were coming up what I called Church
Alley. There must have been seven or eight of them.

Now, it was by Church Alley that my mother and I
always came into our house, and so into our garden. In
the eight years, or nearly so, that I had lived there, I
had by degrees accumulated more and more rubbish near the
furthest end of the alley as a screen, so to speak, that
when my mother or I came in or out, no one in the street
might notice us. I had even made a little wing-fence out
from my own, to which my hand-cart was chained. Next
this I had piled broken brickbats and paving-stones, and
other heavy things, that would not be stolen. There was
the stump and the root of an old pear-tree there, too
heavy to steal, and too crooked and hard to clean or saw.
There was a bit of curbstone from the street, and other
such trash, which quite masked the fence and the hand-
cart.

On the other side--that is, the church side, or the
side furthest from the street--was the sliding-board in
the fence, where my mother and I came in. So soon as it
was slid back, no man could see that the fence was not
solid.