Unless some unexpected complication occurs, this letter places me exactly in the position which it is my present interest to occupy.  If the advertisement appears, and if the remuneration offered is large enough to justify me in going over to the camp of the enemy, over I go.  If no advertisement appears, or if Mr. Noel Vanstone rates my invaluable assistance at too low a figure, here I remain, biding my time till my fair relative wants me, or till I make her want me, which comes to the same thing.  If the anonymous letter falls by any accident into her hands, she will find disparaging allusions in it to myself, purposely introduced to suggest that the writer must be one of the persons whom I addressed while conducting her inquiries.  If Mrs. Lecount takes the business in hand and lays a trap for me—­I decline her tempting invitation by becoming totally ignorant of the whole affair the instant any second person appears in it.  Let the end come as it may, here I am ready to profit by it:  here I am, facing both ways, with perfect ease and security—­a moral agriculturist, with his eye on two crops at once, and his swindler’s sickle ready for any emergency.

For the next week to come, the newspaper will be more interesting to me than ever.  I wonder which side I shall eventually belong to?

THE THIRD SCENE.

VAUXHALL WALK, LAMBETH.

CHAPTER I.

THE old Archiepiscopal Palace of Lambeth, on the southern bank of the Thames—­with its Bishop’s Walk and Garden, and its terrace fronting the river—­is an architectural relic of the London of former times, precious to all lovers of the picturesque, in the utilitarian London of the present day.  Southward of this venerable structure lies the street labyrinth of Lambeth; and nearly midway, in that part of the maze of houses which is placed nearest to the river, runs the dingy double row of buildings now, as in former days, known by the name of Vauxhall Walk.

The network of dismal streets stretching over the surrounding neighborhood contains a population for the most part of the poorer order.  In the thoroughfares where shops abound, the sordid struggle with poverty shows itself unreservedly on the filthy pavement; gathers its forces through the week; and, strengthening to a tumult on Saturday night, sees the Sunday morning dawn in murky gaslight.  Miserable women, whose faces never smile, haunt the butchers’ shops in such London localities as these, with relics of the men’s wages saved from the public-house clutched fast in their hands, with eyes that devour the meat they dare not buy, with eager fingers that touch it covetously, as the fingers of their richer sisters touch a precious stone.  In this district, as in other districts remote from the wealthy quarters of the metropolis, the hideous London vagabond—­with the filth of the street outmatched in his speech,