Parker's Alley and sold old clothes, old iron, bottles, and such like
trash. Parker's Alley was not very easy to find. Going up High Street
from the bridge, you first turned to the right through Cross Street, and
then to the right again down Lock Lane, and out of Lock Lane ran the
alley, a little narrow gutter of a place, dark and squalid, paved with
round stones, through which slops of all kinds perpetually percolated,
and gave forth on the cleanest days a faint and sickening odour. Mike
thought he could buy the stock for five shillings; the rent was only half
a crown a week, and with the help of Tom, a remarkably sharp boy, who
could tell him in what condition the goods were which were offered him
for purchase, he hoped he could manage to make way. It was a dreadful
trial. The old woman had lived amongst all her property. She had eaten
and drunk and slept amidst the dirty rags of Eastthorpe, but Mike could
not. Fortunately the cottage was at the end of the alley. One window
looked out on it, but the door was in a kind of indentation in it round
the corner. On the right-hand side of the door was the room looking into
the alley, and this Mike made his shop; on the left was a little cupboard
of a living-room. He kept the shop window open, so that no customer came
through the doorway, and he begged some scarlet geranium cuttings, which,
in due time, bloomed into brilliant colour on his sitting-room window-
sill, proclaiming that from their possessor hope and delight in life had
not departed. Alas! the enterprise was a failure. Mike was no hand at
driving hard bargains, and frequently, when the Jew from Cambridge came
round to sweep up what Mike had been unable to sell in the town, he found
himself the worse for his purchases. The unscalable wall was again in
front of him, and his foe at his heels, closer than before, and raging
for his blood. He had gone out one morning, Tom leading him, and was
passing the bank, when the cashier ran out. Miss Foster, one of the
maiden ladies who, it will be remembered, lived in the Abbey Close, had
left a sovereign on the counter, and the cashier was exceedingly anxious