And it is likely enough that ten thousand other young men, within the
limits of the London Post-office town delivery, made the same hopeful
remark in the course of the same evening.

The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower,
and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where
accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds,
like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced
it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels
that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got
afloat--among bow-splits staring into windows, and windows staring
into ships--the wheels rolled on, until they stopped at a dark corner,
river-washed and otherwise not washed at all, where the boy alighted and
opened the door.

'You must walk the rest, sir; it's not many yards.' He spoke in the
singular number, to the express exclusion of Eugene.

'This is a confoundedly out-of-the-way place,' said Mortimer, slipping
over the stones and refuse on the shore, as the boy turned the corner
sharp.

'Here's my father's, sir; where the light is.'

The low building had the look of having once been a mill. There was a
rotten wart of wood upon its forehead that seemed to indicate where
the sails had been, but the whole was very indistinctly seen in the
obscurity of the night. The boy lifted the latch of the door, and they
passed at once into a low circular room, where a man stood before a red
fire, looking down into it, and a girl sat engaged in needlework. The