agreeably; but animals never hunted on a better scent.  A dozen turnings in their company brought us in front of a fire.  There we saw two houses preyed on by the flames, just as if a lion had his paws on a couple of human creatures, devouring them; we heard his jaws, the cracking of bones, shrieks, and the voracious in-and-out of his breath edged with anger.  A girl by my side exclaimed, ’It’s not the Bench, after all!  Would I have run to see a paltry two-story washerwoman’s mangling-shed flare up, when six penn’orth of squibs and shavings and a cracker make twice the fun!’

I turned to her, hardly able to speak.  ’Where ’s the Bench, if you please?’ She pointed.  I looked on an immense high wall.  The blunt flames of the fire opposite threw a sombre glow on it.

The girl said, ’And don’t you go hopping into debt, my young cock-sparrow, or you’ll know one side o’ the turnkey better than t’ other.’  She had a friend with her who chid her for speaking so freely.

‘Is it too late to go in to-night?’ I asked.

She answered that it was, and that she and her friend were the persons to show me the way in there.  Her friend answered more sensibly:  ’Yes, you can’t go in there before some time—­in the morning.’

I learnt from her that the Bench was a debtors’ prison.

The saucy girl of the pair asked me for money.  I handed her a crown-piece.

‘Now won’t you give another big bit to my friend?’ said she.

I had no change, and the well-mannered girl bade me never mind, the saucy one pressed for it, and for a treat.  She was amusing in her talk of the quantity of different fires she had seen; she had also seen accidental-death corpses, but never a suicide in the act; and here she regretted the failure of her experiences.  This conversation of a good-looking girl amazed me.  Presently Temple cried, ’A third house caught, and no engines yet!  Richie, there’s an old woman in her night-dress; we can’t stand by.’

The saucy girl joked at the poor half-naked old woman.  Temple stood humping and agitating his shoulders like a cat before it springs.  Both the girls tried to stop us.  The one I liked best seized my watch, and said, ‘Leave this to me to take care of,’ and I had no time to wrestle for it.  I had a glimpse of her face that let me think she was not fooling me, the watch-chain flew off my neck, Temple and I clove through the crowd of gapers.  We got into the heat, which was in a minute scorching.  Three men were under the window; they had sung out to the old woman above to drop a blanket—­she tossed them a water-jug.  She was saved by the blanket of a neighbour.  Temple and I strained at one corner of it to catch her.