In poverty--"Facilis descensus Averni." But many a poor soldier had sloped down there into the boggy canal of Avernus before him.

Nay, he had three corporals and a sergeant for company.
But his lot was relieved by two strange things, presently to appear.

In 1793 war again broke out, the great French war.

This lighted London of some of its superfluous hordes, and lost Israel the subterranean society of his friends, the corporals and sergeant, with whom wandering forlorn through the black kingdoms of mud, he used to spin yarns about sea prisoners in hulks, and listen to stories of the Black Hole of Calcutta; and often would meet other pairs of poor soldiers, perfect strangers, at the more public corners and intersections of sewers--the Charing-Crosses below; one soldier having the other by his remainder button, earnestly discussing the sad prospects of a rise in bread, or the tide; while through the grating of the gutters overhead, the rusty skylights of the realm, came the hoarse rumblings of bakers' carts, with splashes of the flood whereby these unsuspected gnomes of the city lived.
Encouraged by the exodus of the lost tribes of soldiers, Israel returned to chair-bottoming.

And it was in frequenting Covent-Garden market, at early morning, for the purchase of his flags, that he experienced one of the strange alleviations hinted of above.