ark
alleyways. The architecture was unlike anything she had ever seen, the
walls being built with the beams showing outside and the windows of many
small diamond-shaped panes.

They had only proceeded a few yards when Rebecca saw the glint of
sunbeams on water before them and found that they were approaching a
great square tower, surmounted by numberless poles bearing formless
round masses at their ends.

With one arm around her companion to steady herself, she held her
umbrella and bag tightly in her free hand. Now she pointed upward with
her umbrella and said:

"Do you mind tellin' me, mister, what's thet fruit they're a-dryin' up
on thet meetin'-house?"

The horseman glanced upward for a moment and then replied, with
something of wonder in his voice:

"Why, those are men's heads, dame. Know you not London Bridge and the
traitors' poles yet?"

"Oh, good land!" said the horrified woman, and shut her mouth tightly.
Evidently England was not the sort of country she had pictured it.

They rode into a long tunnel under the stones of this massive tower and
emerged to find themselves upon the bridge. Again and again did they
pass under round-arched tunnels bored, as it were, through gloomy
buildings six or seven stories high. These covered the bridge from end
to end, and they swarmed with a squalid humanity, if one might judge
from the calls and cries that resounded in the vaulted passageways and
interior courts.

As they finally came out from beneath the last great rookery, the
sisters found themselves in London, the great and busy city of four
hundred thousand inhabitants.

They were on New Fish Street, and their nostrils gave them witness of
its name at once. Farther up the slight ascent before them they met
other and far worse smells, and Rebecca was disgusted.

"Where are we goin'?" she asked.

"Why, to your mistress' residence, of course."

Rebecca was on the point of objecting to this characterization of her
sister, but she thought better of it ere she spoke. After all, if these
men had done all this kindness by reason of a mistake, she needed not to
correct them.

The street up which they were proceeding opened into Gracechurch Street,
leading still up the hill and away from the Thames. It was a fairly
broad highway, but totally unpaved, and disgraced by a ditch or "kennel"
into which found their way the ill-smelling slops thrown from the
windows and doors of the abutting houses.

"Good land o' Go