The door was hastily opened.  The grizzled pauper reappeared.  He shouted, as he peered at us in the darkness,

‘Who done that?’

’I done it, guvnor,—­and, if you like, you can see me do the other.  It might do your eyesight good.’

Before the grizzled pauper could interfere, he had hurled the stone in his right hand through another pane.  I felt that it was time for me to go.  He was earning a night’s rest at a price which, even in my extremity, I was not disposed to pay.

When I left two or three other persons had appeared upon the scene, and the man in rags was addressing them with a degree of frankness, which, in that direction, left little to be desired.  I slunk away unnoticed.  But had not gone far before I had almost decided that I might as well have thrown in my fortune with the bolder wretch, and smashed a window too.  Indeed, more than once my feet faltered, as I all but returned to do the feat which I had left undone.

A more miserable night for an out-of-door excursion I could hardly have chosen.  The rain was like a mist, and was not only drenching me to the skin, but it was rendering it difficult to see more than a little distance in any direction.  The neighbourhood was badly lighted.  It was one in which I was a stranger, I had come to Hammersmith as a last resource.  It had seemed to me that I had tried to find some occupation which would enable me to keep body and soul together in every other part of London, and that now only Hammersmith was left.  And, at Hammersmith, even the workhouse would have none of me!

Retreating from the inhospitable portal of the casual ward, I had taken the first turning to the left,—­and, at the moment, had been glad to take it.  In the darkness and the rain, the locality which I was entering appeared unfinished.  I seemed to be leaving civilisation behind me.  The path was unpaved; the road rough and uneven, as if it had never been properly made.  Houses were few and far between.  Those which I did encounter, seemed, in the imperfect light, amid the general desolation, to be cottages which were crumbling to decay.

Exactly where I was I could not tell.  I had a faint notion that, if I only kept on long enough, I should strike some part of Walham Green.  How long I should have to keep on I could only guess.  Not a creature seemed to be about of whom I could make inquiries.  It was as if I was in a land of desolation.

I suppose it was between eleven o’clock and midnight.  I had not given up my quest for work till all the shops were closed,—­and in Hammersmith, that night, at any rate, they were not early closers.  Then I had lounged about dispiritedly, wondering what was the next thing I could do.  It was only because I feared that if I attempted to spend the night in the open air, without food, when the morning came I should be broken up, and fit for nothing, that I sought a night’s free board and lodging.  It was really hunger which drove