ministering to my
necessities when all the world had forsaken me, I owe it that I am at
this time alive. For many weeks I had walked at nights with this poor
friendless girl up and down Oxford Street, or had rested with her on
steps and under the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old as
myself; she told me, indeed, that she had not completed her sixteenth
year. By such questions as my interest about her prompted I had
gradually drawn forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary
occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and one in which, if
London beneficence had better adapted its arrangements to meet it, the
power of the law might oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge.
But the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, though deep
and mighty, is yet noiseless and underground; not obvious or readily
accessible to poor houseless wanderers; and it cannot be denied that the
outside air and framework of London society is harsh, cruel, and
repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that part of her injuries might
easily have been redressed, and I urged her often and earnestly to lay
her complaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I assured her
that she would meet with immediate attention, and that English justice,
which was no respecter of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on
the brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property. She promised
me often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out
from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which
showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps
she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous
tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something,
however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between us
at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was ever to
see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate,
and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was
destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that which she
rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her,
was this:--One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and
after a day when I had felt more than usually ill and faint, I requested
her to turn off with me into Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat
down on the steps of a house, w