ht's aspect, is a mere dream of
chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed
like Noah's arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery
overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I
lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry's
footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys
at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until
morning.

Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the
beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on
every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling
that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any
strength for getting to my journey's end, I resolved to make the sale
of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off,
that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began
a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.

It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in
second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the
look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had,
hanging up among their stock, an officer's coat or two, epaulettes and
all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and
walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.

This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops,
and such shops as Mr. Dolloby's, in preference to the regular dealers.
At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a
dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the
palings of which some second-hand sailors' clothes, that seemed to have
overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,
and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so
many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the
world.

Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened
rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was
descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was
not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all
covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it,
and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look
at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, a