The sense of this serious peril—­a peril which every day and every hour might bring nearer and nearer to us—­was the one influence that guided me in fixing the place of our retreat.  I chose it in the far east of London, where there were fewest idle people to lounge and look about them in the streets.  I chose it in a poor and a populous neighbourhood—­because the harder the struggle for existence among the men and women about us, the less the risk of their having the time or taking the pains to notice chance strangers who came among them.  These were the great advantages I looked to, but our locality was a gain to us also in another and a hardly less important respect.  We could live cheaply by the daily work of my hands, and could save every farthing we possessed to forward the purpose, the righteous purpose, of redressing an infamous wrong—­which, from first to last, I now kept steadily in view.

In a week’s time Marian Halcombe and I had settled how the course of our new lives should be directed.

There were no other lodgers in the house, and we had the means of going in and out without passing through the shop.  I arranged, for the present at least, that neither Marian nor Laura should stir outside the door without my being with them, and that in my absence from home they should let no one into their rooms on any pretence whatever.  This rule established, I went to a friend whom I had known in former days—­a wood engraver in large practice—­to seek for employment, telling him, at the same time, that I had reasons for wishing to remain unknown.

He at once concluded that I was in debt, expressed his regret in the usual forms, and then promised to do what he could to assist me.  I left his false impression undisturbed, and accepted the work he had to give.  He knew that he could trust my experience and my industry.  I had what he wanted, steadiness and facility, and though my earnings were but small, they sufficed for our necessities.  As soon as we could feel certain of this, Marian Halcombe and I put together what we possessed.  She had between two and three hundred pounds left of her own property, and I had nearly as much remaining from the purchase-money obtained by the sale of my drawing-master’s practice before I left England.  Together we made up between us more than four hundred pounds.  I deposited this little fortune in a bank, to be kept for the expense of those secret inquiries and investigations which I was determined to set on foot, and to carry on by myself if I could find no one to help me.  We calculated our weekly expenditure to the last farthing, and we never touched our little fund except in Laura’s interests and for Laura’s sake.