her, and his countenance to exhibit alarming manifestations of
inward emotion. Impelled by such reflections, he grasped his carpet-bag,
and creeping stealthily downstairs, shut the detestable street door with
as little noise as possible, and walked off. Bending his steps towards
the Royal Hotel, he found a coach on the point of starting for Bristol,
and, thinking Bristol as good a place for his purpose as any other he
could go to, he mounted the box, and reached his place of destination
in such time as the pair of horses, who went the whole stage and back
again, twice a day or more, could be reasonably supposed to arrive
there. He took up his quarters at the Bush, and designing to postpone
any communication by letter with Mr. Pickwick until it was probable that
Mr. Dowler's wrath might have in some degree evaporated, walked forth
to view the city, which struck him as being a shade more dirty than any
place he had ever seen. Having inspected the docks and shipping, and
viewed the cathedral, he inquired his way to Clifton, and being directed
thither, took the route which was pointed out to him. But as the
pavements of Bristol are not the widest or cleanest upon earth, so its
streets are not altogether the straightest or least intricate; and Mr.
Winkle, being greatly puzzled by their manifold windings and twistings,
looked about him for a decent shop in which he could apply afresh for
counsel and instruction.

His eye fell upon a newly-painted tenement which had been recently
converted into something between a shop and a private house, and which
a red lamp, projecting over the fanlight of the street door, would have
sufficiently announced as the residence of a medical practitioner, even
if the word 'Surgery' had not been inscribed in golden characters on a
wainscot ground, above the window of what, in times bygone, had been
the front parlour. Thinking this an eligible place wherein to make
his inquiries, Mr. Winkle stepped into the little shop where the
gilt-labelled drawers and bottles were; and finding nobody there,
knocked with a half-crown on the counter, to attract the attention of
anybody who might happen to be in the back parlour, which he judged to
be the innermost and peculiar sanctum of the establishment, from the
repetition of the word surgery on the door--painted in white letters
this time, by way of taking off the monotony.

At the first knock, a sound, as of persons fencing with fire-irons,
which had until n