of scratched surface.

Pennyloaf sped homewards. She lived in Shooter's Gardens, a
picturesque locality which demolition and rebuilding have of late
transformed. It was a winding alley, with paving raised a foot above
the level of the street whence was its main approach. To enter from
the obscurer end, you descended a flight of steps, under a low
archway, in a court itself not easily discovered. From without, only
a glimpse of the Gardens was obtainable; the houses curved out of
sight after the first few yards, and left surmise to busy itself
with the characteristics of the hidden portion. A stranger bold
enough to explore would have discovered that the Gardens had a blind
offshoot, known simply as 'The Court.' Needless to burden
description with further detail; the slum was like any other slum;
filth, rottenness, evil odours, possessed these dens of superfluous
mankind and made them gruesome to the peering imagination. The
inhabitants of course felt nothing of the sort; a room in Shooter's
Gardens was the only kind of home that most of them knew or desired.
The majority preferred it, on all grounds, to that offered them in a
block of model lodgings not very far away; here was independence,
that is to say, the liberty to be as vile as they pleased. How they
came to love vileness, well, that is quite another matter, and shall
not for the present concern us.

Pennyloaf ran into the jaws of this black horror with the
indifference of habit; it had never occurred to her that the Gardens
were fearful in the night's gloom, nor even that better lighting
would have been a convenience. Did it happen that she awoke from her
first sleep with the ring of ghastly shrieking in her ears, that was
an incident of too common occurrence to cause her more than a brief