When they walked into the open air, Mr. Lorrimer first became intimate with
a lamp-post, which he was loath to leave, and then bitterly bewailed his
ignorance of localities. Glover good-naturedly suggested that his young
friend would do well to take up quarters with him, that night, and promised
to conduct him wherever he desired to go, the next morning. His young
friend was not in the humor for hesitation, and, distrusting his own
perambulatory powers, gave himself up, without reserve, to Glover's
guidance. Linked together by their arms, they sailed along, like an
energetic little steam-tug, puffing, plunging, sputtering, under the shadow
of a serene and stately Indiaman.

The fog had now gathered solidity, and hung chillingly over the city's
heart. How desolate were the thoroughfares! The street-lamps gleamed
luridly from their stands, serving only to make the dreary darkness
visible. Lorrimer's late merry fancies were all extinguished as suddenly as
they had blazed forth. Even his sturdy guide showed a depression and
constraint that strangely contrasted with his former gayety. He vainly drew
upon his mirth-account; there was no issue, "Beastly fog!" said he, "we
might drill holes in it, and blast it with gunpowder!" They approached the
Common, and the hideous structure opposite West Street glared on them like
a fiery monster, and seemed exactly the reverse of the gate to a forty-acre
Paradise. Sheltering their faces from the wind, which now added its
inconveniences to the saturating atmosphere, they struck the broad avenue,
and pushed across towards the West End.

The wind sang most doleful strains, and the bending branches of the trees
sighed sadly over them. Lorrimer was filled with an anxious tribulation, as
he remembered the story of the villany that, two nights before, near the
spot where they now walked, and perhaps at the same hour, had been