with a thunderous oath, and the assurance that, if she did not pay up in a day or two, every stick would be carried off.  Pitiful pleading for time had absolutely no effect upon Abraham.  Here and there e tenant would complain of high rent, and point out a cracked ceiling, a rotten piece of stairs, or something else imperatively calling for renovation.  “If you don’t like the room, clear out,” was the landlord’s sole reply to all such speeches.

In one place they came across an old Irish woman engaged in washing.  The room was hung with reeking clothes from wall to wall.  For a time it was difficult to distinguish objects through the steam, and Waymark, making his way in, stumbled and almost fell over an open box.  From the box at once proceeded a miserable little wail, broken by as terrible a cough as a child could be afflicted with; and Waymark then perceived that the box was being used as a cradle, in which lay a baby gasping in the agonies of some throat disease, whilst drops from the wet clothing trickled on to its face.

On leaving this house, they entered Elm Court.  Here, sitting on the doorstep of the first house, was a child of apparently nine or ten, and seemingly a girl, though the nondescript attire might have concealed either sex, and the face was absolutely sexless in its savagery.  Her hair was cut short, and round her neck was a bit of steel chain, fastened with string.  On seeing the two approach, she sprang up, and disappeared with a bound into the house.

“That’s the most infernal little devil in all London, I do believe,” said Mr. Woodstock, as they began to ascend the stairs.  “Her mother owes two weeks, and if she don’t pay something to-day, I’ll have her out.  She’ll be shamming illness, you’ll see.  The child ran up to prepare her.”

The room in question was at the top of the house.  It proved to be quite bare of furniture.  On a bundle of straw in one corner was lying a woman, to all appearances in extremis.  She lay looking up to the ceiling, her face distorted into the most ghastly anguish, her lips foaming; her whole frame shivered incessantly.

“Ha, I thought so,” exclaimed Abraham as he entered.  “Are you going to pay anything this week?”

The woman seemed to be unconscious.

“Have you got the rent?” asked Mr. Woodstock, turning to the child, who had crouched down in another corner.

“No, we ain’t,” was the reply, with a terribly fierce glare from eyes which rather seemed to have looked on ninety years than nine.

“Then out you go!  Come, you, get up now; d’ you hear?  Very well; come along, Waymark; you take hold of that foot, and I’ll take this.  Now, drag her out on to the landing.”