t out in lodgings, the particular house in question being again, with
a horrible grotesqueness, next door but one to a beer-shop called the
"Hit or Miss!" I expected to find Roan Street the observed of all
observers, but the nine days' wonder was over since what Dickens called
the "ink-widge." Indeed, a homicide has ceased to be a nine days'
wonder now. This only happened on Saturday; and when I was there, on the
following Wednesday, Roan Street had settled down into its wonted
repose. A woman with a child was standing on the door-step, and, on my
inquiring if I could see the kitchen, referred me to Mrs. Bristow at the
chandler's shop, who farms the rent of these populous tenements; for
Munyard's Row is peopled "from garret to basement," and a good way
underground too.

Mrs. Bristow, a civil, full-flavoured Irishwoman, readily consented to
act cicerone, and we went through the passage into the back garden,
where all the poor household furniture of the homicide's late "home" was
stacked. It did not occupy a large space, consisting only of the
bedstead on which the poor woman sat when the fatal deed was done, two
rickety tables, and two chairs. These were all the movables of a family
of nine. The mattress was left inside--too horrible a sight, after what
had taken place, to be exposed to the light of day.

We passed--Honora Bristow and myself--with a "gossip" or two, who had
come to see what I was after, into the back kitchen, for the wifeslayer
had two rooms en suite, though the family elected to occupy only one.
The floor of this apartment was either mother earth, or, if flagged, so
grimed with filth as to be a very fair resemblance of the soil. Here
stood only that terrible memento, the drenched mattress. In the front
kitchen--which, let me state, would have been palatial in comparison
with the Seven Dials or Spitalfields, had it been only clean--there was
very little light, for the window, which was well down below the surface
of the pavement, had not a whole pane in it, and the broken ones had
been stuffed up with old rags which were very protuberant indeed. That
window alone would show that the menage had not been a judicious one.

"He was a quiet man," said Honora, "and gave trouble to no one. He and
his wife never had a word." The gossips all believed that the story of
the throwing the knife was true, notwithstanding the medical evidence
went against it. The boy of twelve, who provoked the father to throw the
kn