Pennyloaf sped homewards.  She lived in Shooter’s Gardens, a picturesque locality which demolition and rebuilding have of late transformed.  It was a winding alley, with paving raised a foot above the level of the street whence was its main approach.  To enter from the obscurer end, you descended a flight of steps, under a low archway, in a court itself not easily discovered.  From without, only a glimpse of the Gardens was obtainable; the houses curved out of sight after the first few yards, and left surmise to busy itself with the characteristics of the hidden portion.  A stranger bold enough to explore would have discovered that the Gardens had a blind offshoot, known simply as ‘The Court.’  Needless to burden description with further detail; the slum was like any other slum; filth, rottenness, evil odours, possessed these dens of superfluous mankind and made them gruesome to the peering imagination.  The inhabitants of course felt nothing of the sort; a room in Shooter’s Gardens was the only kind of home that most of them knew or desired.  The majority preferred it, on all grounds, to that offered them in a block of model lodgings not very far away; here was independence, that is to say, the liberty to be as vile as they pleased.  How they came to love vileness, well, that is quite another matter, and shall not for the present concern us.

Pennyloaf ran into the jaws of this black horror with the indifference of habit; it had never occurred to her that the Gardens were fearful in the night’s gloom, nor even that better lighting would have been a convenience.  Did it happen that she awoke from her first sleep with the ring of ghastly shrieking in her ears, that was an incident of too common occurrence to cause her more than a brief curiosity; she could wait till the morning to hear who had half-killed whom.  Four days ago it was her own mother’s turn to be pounded into insensibility; her father (a journeyman baker, often working nineteen hours out of the twenty-four, which probably did not improve his temper), maddened by his wife’s persistent drunkenness, was stopped just on the safe side of murder.  To the amazement and indignation of the Gardens, Mrs. Candy prosecuted her sovereign lord; the case had been heard to-day, and Candy had been east in a fine.  The money was paid, and the baker went his way, remarking that his family were to ’expect him back when they saw him.’  Mrs. Candy, on her return, was hooted through all the length of the Gardens, a demonstration of public feeling probably rather of base than of worthy significance.

As Pennyloaf drew near to the house, a wild, discordant voice suddenly broke forth somewhere in the darkness, singing n a high key, ’All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him for ever!’ It was Mad Jack, who had his dwelling in the Court, and at all hours was wont to practise the psalmody which made him notorious throughout Clerkenwell.  A burst of laughter followed from a group of men and