So far, and until they reached the Tower, their road was familiar
enough; but from Smithfield onwards they had to halt and inquire
their way again and again in intervals of threading the traffic which
poured out of cross-streets and to and from the docks on their
right--wagons empty, wagons laden with hides, jute, scrap-iron,
tallow, indigo, woollen bales, ochre, sugar; trollies and
pack-horses; here and there a cordon of porters and warehousemen
trundling barrels as nonchalantly as a child his hoop. The business
of piloting his mother through these cross-tides left Charles little
time for observation; but one incident of that walk he never forgot.

They were passing Shadwell when they came on a knot of people and two
watchmen posted at the corner of a street across which a reek of
smoke mingled with clouds of gritty dust. Twice or thrice they heard
a crash or dull rumble of falling masonry. A distillery had been
blazing there all night and a gang of workmen was now clearing the
ruins. But as Charles and his mother came by the corner, the knot of
people parted and gave passage to a line of stretchers--six
stretchers in all, and on each a body, which the bearers had not
taken the trouble to cover from view. A bystander said that these
were men who had run back into the building to drink the flaming
spirit, and had dropped insensible, and been crushed when the walls
fell in. The boy had never seen death before; and at the sight of it
thrust upon him in this brutal form, he put out a hand towards his
mother to find that she too was swaying.

"Hallo!" cried the same bystander, "look out there! the lady's
fainting."

But Mrs. Wesley steadied herself. "'Tis not _that_," she gasped,