Some of the houses had ragged plants on the window-sills; in one window a canary was singing.

Then, at a bend, they came into a blacker reach of human river.

Here were outbuildings, houses with broken windows, houses with windows boarded up, fried-fish shops, low public-houses, houses without doors.

There were more men here than women, and those men were wheeling barrows full of rags and bottles, or not even full of rags and bottles; or they were standing by the public-houses gossiping or quarrelling in groups of three or four; or very slowly walking in the gutters, or on the pavements, as though trying to remember if they were alive.

Then suddenly some young man with gaunt violence in his face would pass, pushing his barrow desperately, striding fiercely by.