ip into such a place; but there's no help for it, if
you really wish to see the young man yourself."

"Oh yes, yes," cried the other; "anything, everything, I can bear all,
if I may only see him alive, and rescue him from his misery and sin."

"Wait for us here," said the officer to the cabman, as they alighted in
the middle of a nest of streets, which seemed as though huddled
together, by common consent, to shut out from public gaze their filth
and guilty wretchedness. Wretched indeed they were, as the haunts of
destitution and crime. All was foul and dingy. Distorted roofs patched
with mis-shapen tiles; chimneys leaning at various angles out of the
perpendicular; walls vile with the smoke and grime of a generation;
mortar that looked as though it never in its best days could have been
white; shattered doors whose proper colour none could tell, and which,
standing ajar, seemed to lead to nothing but darkness; weird women and
gaunt children imparting a dismal life to the rows of ungainly
dwellings;--all these made up a picture of squalid woe such as might
well have appalled a stouter heart than poor Lady Oldfield's. And was
she to find her delicately-nurtured son in such a place as this? They
turned down one street, under the wondering eyes of old and young, and
then plunged into a narrow court that led to nothing. Here, two doors
down on the left hand, they entered, and proceeded to climb a rickety
stair till they reached the highest floor. A voice that sent all the
blood rushing back to poor Lady Oldfield's heart was heard in high
strain, and another, mingling with it, muttering a croaking
accompaniment of remonstrance,--

"Well, you're a fine young gentleman, I've no doubt; but you'll not bide
long in that fashion, I reckon."

Then came a bit of a song in the younger voice,--

"Drink, boys, drink, and drive away your sorrow;
For though we're here to-day, we mayn't be here to-morrow."

The superintendent knocked at the door, and both entered. The old woman
uttered an exclamation of terror at the sight of the strangers, but the
appearance of Lady Oldfield reassured her, for she divined almost
immediately who she must be. On her part, Lady Oldfield instinctively
shrunk back at her first entrance, and well she might; for the revolting
sights and odours almost overpowered her, spite of her all-absorbing
anxiety to find and rescue her beloved child.

The room, if it could be justly called so--for it was