see a single soul. Stay, here is one. A little
white-headed ruffian leaps from the shadow
of Archbishop's Tenison's Chapel. He has
on a ragged pair of trousers, and nothing else
to speak of. He vehemently demands to be
allowed to turn head over heels three times
for a penny. I give him the penny the
phantom gave me (cheap charity), and
intimate that I can dispense with the tumbling.
But he is too honest for that, and, putting the
penny in his mouth, disappears in a series of
summersaults. Then, the gas-lamps and I
have it all to ourselves.

Safe at the corner (corners again, you see)
of what was once the Quadrant, where a
mongrel dog joins company. I know he is a
dog without a bed, like I am, for he has not
that grave trot, so full of purpose, which the
dog on business has. This dog wanders
irresolutely, and makes feigned turnings up by-
streets—returning to the main thoroughfare
in a slouching skulking manner—he ruminates
over cigar-stumps and cabbage-stalks, which
no homeward-bound dog would do. But even
that dog is happier than I am, for he can lie
down on any doorstep, and take his rest, and
no policeman shall say him nay; but the
New Police Act won't let me do so, and says
sternly that I must " move on."

Halloo! a rattle in the distance — nearer—
nearer — louder and louder! Now it bursts
upon my sight. A fire-engine at full speed;
and the street is crowded in a moment!

Where the people came from I don't
pretend to say — but there they are—hundreds of
them all wakeful and noisy, and clamorous.
On goes the engine, with people hallooing, and
following, and mingling with the night wind
the dreadful cry of FIRE.

I follow of course. An engine at top
speed is as potent a spell to a night prowler,
as a pack of hounds in full cry is to a
Leicestershire yeoman. Its influence is contagious
too, and the crowd swells at every yard of
distance traversed. The fire is in a narrow
street off Soho, at a pickle-shop. It is a fierce
one, at which I think the crowd is pleased;
but then nobody lives in the house, at which I
imagine they are slightly chagrined; for
excitement, you see, at a fire is everything. En
revanche there are no less than three families
of small children next door, and the crowd are
hugely delighted when they are expeditiously
brought out in their night-dresses, by the
Fire-brigade.

More excitement! The house on the other
side has caught fire. The mob are in ecstasies,
and the pickpockets make a simultaneous
onslaught on all the likely pockets near them.
I am not pleased, but interested—highly
interested. I would pump, but I am not strong
in the arms. Those who pump, I observe, get
beer.

I have been watching the blazing pile so
long — basking, as it were, in the noise and
shouting and confusion; the hoarse clank of
the engines — the cheering of the crowd — the
dull roar of the fire, that the bed question has
been quite in abeyance, and I have forgotten
all about it and the time. But when the fire
is quenched, or at least brought under, as it
is at last ; when the sheets of flame and sparks
are succeeded by columns of smoke and steam ;
when, as a natural consequence, the excitement
begins to flag a little, and the pressure
of the crowd diminishes ; then, turning away
from the charred and gutted pickle-shop, I
hear the clock of St. Anne's, Soho, strike four,
and find that it is broad daylight.

Four dreary hours yet to wander before a
London day commences; four weary, dismal
revolutions on the clock-face, before the milkman
makes his rounds, and I can obtain access
to my penates, with the matutinal supply of
milk!

To add to my discomfort, to the utter heart-
weariness and listless misery which is slowly
creeping over me, it begins to rain. Not a
sharp pelting shower, but a slow, monotonous,
ill-conditioned drizzle; damping without
wetting — now deluding you into the idea that it
is going to hold up, and now with a sudden
spirt in your face, mockingly informing you
that it has no intention of the kind. Very
wretchedly indeed I thread the narrow little
streets about Soho, meeting no one but a tom
cat returning from his club, and a misanthropic
looking policeman, who is feeling shutter-
bolts and tugging at door-handles with a
vicious aspect, as though he were disappointed
that some unwary householder had not left a
slight temptation for a sharp house-breaker.

I meet another policeman in Golden-square,
who looks dull; missing, probably, the society
of the functionary who guards the fire-escape
situated in that fashionable locality, and who
hasn't come back from the burnt pickle-shop
yet. He honours me with a long stare as I
pass him.

"Good morning," he says.

I return the compliment.

"Going home to bed?" he asks.

"Y-e-es," I answer.

He turns on his heel and says no more;
but, bless you! I can see irony in his bull's-
eye — contemptuous incredulity in his oil-skin
cape! It needs not the long low whistle in
which he indulges, to tell me that he knows
very well I have no bed to go home to.

I sneak quietly down Sherrard Street into
the Quadrant. I don't know why, but I
begin to be afraid of policemen. I never
transgressed the law—yet I avoid the " force."
The sound of their heavy boot-heels disquiets
me. One of them stands at the door of
Messrs. Swan and Edgar's, and to avoid him
I actually abandon a resolution I had formed
of walking up Regent Street, and turn down
the Haymarket instead.

There are three choice spirits who evidently
have got beds to go to, though they are somewhat
tardy in seeking them. I can tell that
they have latch-keys, by their determined air—
their bold and confident speech. They have