At last he pulled his horse to a standstill, and descended from his seat.
"This 'ere's the place," he said, "and that's the street he bolted down.
Yer can't mistake it.

Now let's have a look at yer suvering, guvner, and then I'll be off home to bed, and it's about time too." I paid him the sum I had promised him, and then made my way down the narrow street, in the direction Hayle had taken.

It was not more than a couple of hundred yards long, and was hemmed in on either hand by squalid cottages.

As if to emphasize the misery of the locality, and perhaps in a measure to account for it, at the further end I discovered a gin-palace, whose flaring lights illuminated the streets on either hand with brazen splendour.

A small knot of loafers were clustered on the pavement outside the public, and these were exactly the men I wanted.