of three coaches; one of these Job hailed--we entered it--a secret
direction was given, and we drove furiously on, faster than I should
think the crazy body of hackney chariot ever drove before. I observed,
that we had now entered a part of the town, which was singularly strange
to me; the houses were old, and for the most part of the meanest
description; we appeared to me to be threading a labyrinth of alleys;
once, I imagined that I caught, through a sudden opening, a glimpse of
the river, but we passed so rapidly, that my eye might have deceived me.
At length we stopped: the coachman was again dismissed, and I again
walked onwards, under the guidance, and almost at the mercy of my honest
companion.

Jonson did not address me--he was silent and absorbed, and I had
therefore full leisure to consider my present situation. Though (thanks
to my physical constitution) I am as callous to fear as most men, a few
chilling apprehensions, certainly flitted across my mind, when I looked
round at the dim and dreary sheds--houses they were not--which were on
either side of our path; only here and there, a single lamp shed a sickly
light upon the dismal and intersecting lanes (though lane is too lofty a
word), through which our footsteps woke a solitary sound. Sometimes this
feeble light was altogether withheld, and I could scarcely catch even the
outline of my companion's muscular frame. However, he strode on through
the darkness, with the mechanical rapidity of one to whom every stone is
familiar. I listened eagerly for the sound of the watchman's voice, in
vain--that note was never heard in those desolate recesses. My ear drank
in nothing but the sound of our own footsteps, or the occasional burst of
obscene and unholy merriment from some half-closed hovel, where infamy
and vice were holding revels. Now and then, a wretched thing, in the
vilest extreme of want, and loathsomeness, and rags, loitered by the
unfrequent lamps, and interrupted our progress with solicitations, which