You remember that the Gardens had an offshoot, which was known simply as The Court.  In this blind alley there stood throughout the day a row of baked-potato ovens, ten or a dozen of them, chained together, the property of a local capitalist who let them severally to men engaged in this business.  At seven o’clock of an evening fires were wont to be lighted under each of these baking-machines, preparatory to their being wheeled away, each to its customary street-corner.  Now the lighting of fires entails the creation of smoke, and whilst these ten or twelve ovens were getting ready to bake potatoes the Court was in a condition not easily described.  A single lamp existed for the purpose of giving light to the alley, and at no time did this serve much more than to make darkness visible; at present the blind man would have fared as well in that retreat as he who had eyes, and the marvel was how those who lived there escaped suffocation.  In the Gardens themselves volumes of dense smoke every now and then came driven along by the cold gusts; the air had a stifling smell and a bitter taste.

Pennyloaf found nothing remarkable in this phenomenon; it is hard to say what would have struck her as worthy of indignant comment in her world of little ease.  But near the entrance to the Court, dimly discernible amid sagging fumes, was a cluster of people, and as everything of that kind just now excited her apprehensions, she drew near to see what was happening.  The gathering was around Mad Jack; he looked more than usually wild, and with one hand raised above his head was on the point of relating a vision he had had the night before.

’Don’t laugh!  Don’t any of you laugh; for as sure as I live it was an angel stood in the room and spoke to me.  There was a light such as none of you ever saw, and the angel stood in the midst of it.  And he said to me:  “Listen, whilst I reveal to you the truth, that you may know where you arc and what you are; and this is done for a great purpose.”  And I fell down on my knees; but never a word could I have spoken.  Then the angel said:  “You are passing through a state of punishment.  You, and all the poor among whom you live; all those who are in suffering of body and darkness of mind, were once rich people, with every blessing the world can bestow, with every opportunity of happiness in yourselves and of making others happy.  Because you made an ill use of your wealth, because you were selfish and hard-hearted and oppressive and sinful in every kind of indulgence—­therefore after death you received the reward of wickedness.  This life you are now leading is that of the damned; this place to which you are confined is Hell!  There is no escape for you.  From poor you shall become poorer; the older you grow the lower shall you sink in want and misery; at the end there is waiting for you, one and all, a death in abandonment and despair.  This is Hell—­Hell—­Hell!"’