ng down from a Scottish
church between Bill Street the aforesaid and the road, and a terrace
on the other side of the road. A cheap, mean-looking terrace of houses,
flush with the pavement, each with two windows upstairs and a large
one in the middle downstairs, with a slit on one side of it called a
door--looking remarkably skully in ghastly dawns, afterglows, and rainy
afternoons and evenings. The slits look as if the owners of the skulls
got it there from an upward blow of a sharp tomahawk, from a shorter
man--who was no friend of theirs--just about the time they died. The
slits open occasionally, and mothers of the nation, mostly holding
their garments together at neck or bosom, lean out--at right angles
almost--and peer up and down the road, as if they are casually curious
as to what is keeping the rent collector so late this morning. Then they
shut up till late in the day, when a boy or two comes home from
work. The terrace should be called "Jim's Terrace" if the road is not
"James's" Road, because no bills ever seem to be paid there as they are
in our street--and for other reasons. There are four houses, but seldom
more than two of them occupied at one time--often only one. Tenants
never shift in, or at least are never seen to, but they get there. The
sign is a furtive candle light behind an old table cloth, a skirt, or
any rag of dark stuff tacked across the front bedroom window, upstairs,
and a shadow suggestive of a woman making up a bed on the floor.

If more than two of the houses are occupied there is almost certain to
be an old granny with ragged grey hair, who folded her arms tight under
her ragged old breasts, and bends her tough old body, and sticks her
ragged grey old head out of the slit called a door, and squints up and
down the road, but not in the interests of mischief-making--they are
never here long enough--only out of mild, ragged, grey-headed curiosity
regarding the health or affairs of the rent collector.

Perhaps there are no bills to be collected in Skull Terrace because no
credit is given. No jugs are put out, because there is no place to put
them, except on the pavement, or on the narrow window ledges, where
they would be in great and constant danger from the feet or elbows of
passers-by. There are no tradesmen's entrances to the houses in Skull
Terrace.

Tenants and sub-tenants often leave on Friday morning in the full glare
of the day. Granny throws down garments from the top window to