Any one whom business or pleasure has taken across Hungerford Bridge may
have observed, on the right hand, as he reached the Lambeth side of the
river, a curious tumbledown-looking counting-house, something between a
travelling caravan and the city barge, elevated on some rickety piles,
with a rusty balcony projecting from its river front, and without any
visible means of access or egress, except down the chimney, or along a
rotten row of spouts, barely fastened to its decaying woodwork. It is a
dismal, melancholy place. The glass has been untouched for years, and is
coated with dirt, although through it may be seen files of old
dust-covered papers, hanging amidst festooned cobwebs and corroded
inkstands, with stumps of pens still sticking in the holes. Everything
tells of broken hearts and ruined fortunes; of homes made desolate by
misplaced confidence, and long, long lawsuits, which outlived those who
started them, and were left—with nothing else, to the poor and
struggling heirs!
It was a miserable November evening: the passengers were glooming
through the haze of the feeble lights, choked by the river fog, like dim
spectres; and a melancholy drip fell, in measured plashings, from every
penthouse and coping, as two figures slowly pursued their way towards
this dreary place, through some of the old and tortuous streets that lie
between the York Road and the river side.
[_The heroes (as the case may be) being thus introduced, the author can
go ahead with his plot, if he has one._]
[Illustration]