for his work. But the day following that he was calm and attentive. Two
bags of gold were placed in his hands, and he walked with caution down
the steps of the Bank, turned the corner, and went straight on to the
West, never once hesitating, or casting a thought behind upon Mortimer
and Pennycuick's. He had not, in truth, one that was loose to be cast.
All his thoughts were boiling in his head, obfuscating him with a
prodigious steam, through which he beheld the city surging, and the
streets curving like lines in water, and the people mixing and passing
into and out of one another in an astonishing manner--no face
distinguishable; the whole thick multitude appearing to be stirred like
glue in a gallipot. The only distinct thought which he had sprang from a
fear that the dishonest ruffians would try to steal his gold, and he
hugged it, and groaned to see that villany was abroad. Marvellous, too,
that the clocks on the churches, all the way along the Westward
thoroughfare, stuck at the hour when Banks are closed to business! It
was some time, or a pretence at some time, before the minute-hands
surmounted that difficulty. Having done so, they rushed ahead to the
ensuing hour with the mad precipitation of pantomimic machinery. The
sight of them presently standing on the hour, like a sentinel presenting
arms, was startling--laughable. Anthony could not have flipped with his
fingers fifty times in the interval; he was sure of it, "or not much
more," he said. So the City was shut to him behind iron bars.

Up in the West there is not so much to be dreaded from the rapacity of
men. You do not hear of such alarming burglaries there every day; every
hand is not at another's throat there, or in another's pocket; at least,
not until after nightfall; and when the dark should come on, Anthony had
determined to make for his own quarter with all speed. Darkness is
horrible in foreign places, but foreign places are not so accusing to you
by daylight.