You had but to turn a corner, and lo! the very earth seemed vital
and teeming with human beings. Poor men and the children of poor men,
disputed possession of every brick upon the sidewalks. Every hole
in those dilapidated buildings swarmed with a family; every corner
of the leaky garrets and damp cellars was full of poverty-stricken
life. Here were no green trees, no leaf-clad vines climbing upon the
walls; empty casks, old brooms, and battered wash-tubs littered the
back yards, which the sweet fresh grass should have carpeted. Ash
pans and tubs of kitchen offal choked up the areas. The very light,
as it struggled through those dingy windows, seemed pinched and smoky.

All this contrast of poverty and wealth lay in the policeman's beat.
Now he was with the rich, almost warmed by the light that came like
a flood of wine through some tall window muffled in crimson damask.
The smooth pavements under his feet glowed with brilliant gas-light.
The next moment, and a few smoky street lamps failed to reveal the
broken flagging on which he trod. Now and then the gleam of a coarse
tallow candle swaling gloomily away by some sick bed, threw its murky
light across his path. Still, but for the cold moonlight, Chester
would have found much difficulty in making his rounds in the poor
man's district. Yet here he remained longest; here his step always
grew heavy and his brow thoughtful. Surrounded by suffering, shut
out from his eyes only by those irregular walls, and clouded, as it
were, with the slumbering sorrow around him, this dark place always
cast him into painful thought. That cold night he was more than
usually affected by the suffering which he knew was close to him,
and only invisible to the eye.

The night before, he had entered one of those dismal houses and had
taken from thence a woman who, squalid and degraded as she was, had