'Oh! it's London,' Temple went on, correcting his incorrigible doubts
about it. He jumped on the platform; we had to call out not to lose one
another. 'I say, Richie, this is London,' he said, linking his arm in
mine: 'you know by the size of the station; and besides, there's the fog.
Oh! it's London. We've overshot it, we're positively in London.'

I could spare no sympathy for his feelings, and I did not respond to his
inquiring looks. Now that we were here I certainly wished myself away,
though I would not have retreated, and for awhile I was glad of the
discomforts besetting me; my step was hearty as I led on, meditating upon
asking some one the direction to the Bench presently. We had to walk,
and it was nothing but traversing on a slippery pavement atmospheric
circles of black brown and brown red, and sometimes a larger circle of
pale yellow; the colours of old bruised fruits, medlars, melons, and the
smell of them; nothing is more desolate. Neither of us knew where we
were, nor where we were going. We struggled through an interminable
succession of squalid streets, from the one lamp visible to its neighbour
in the darkness: you might have fancied yourself peering at the head of
an old saint on a smoky canvas; it was like the painting of light rather
than light. Figures rushed by; we saw no faces.

Temple spoke solemnly: ' Our dinner-hour at home is half-past six.'
A street-boy overheard him and chaffed him. Temple got the worst of it,
and it did him good, for he had the sweetest nature in the world. We
declined to be attended by link-boys; they would have hurt our sense of
independence. Possessed of a sovereign faith that, by dint of
resolution, I should ultimately penetrate to the great square enclosing
the Bench, I walked with the air of one who had the map of London in his
eye and could thread it blindfold. Temple was thereby deceived into
thinking that I must somehow have learnt the direction I meant to take,