It was midnight, and as silent as the grave. The quality of the silence was peculiar; for although no sound stirred the air close at hand, there was, beyond the limits at which the ear could detect individual sounds, from minute to minute a tone of deep murmur, which would have been like the noises of a distant sea but that it was pulseless. Overhead hung an impenetrable cloud of darkness. There was no moon, no star, no light from the north. Looking right overhead, one saw nothing, absolutely nothing. The eyes of the living were, when turned towards the sky, as useless as the eyes of the dead. But casting the eyes down, one could see roofs, and towers, and spires, and domes, dim and ghastly in the veiled underlight, glowing upward from the streets of a vast city. No wind stirred. The broad river, with its radial gleams of light shooting towards the lamps, moved no more than an inland lake into which no stream whispers, from which no stream hurries forth. It was high water. Looking down from the giddy height, no moving forms could be seen, a policeman had passed under a little while ago, and none would pass again for a little while more, except some thief on his way to plunder the living, or some poor, troubled, outcast brother on his way to the river to join the silent confraternity of the dead. The leads were slippery with dew and green slime; the battlements were clammy and cold. To look straight down one should raise himself slightly on the parapet of the embrasure. Then he saw a perpendicular chasm, two hundred feet deep on his side, a hundred feet deep on the side opposite. On the four sides of the leads were four such chasms, and in all of them lay the dark heavy gloom of that summer night, save where once in each cleft there burned a fiery point--the gas-lamp--to scare the unlawful and light the harmless through the silent ways--part of the mighty city-labyrinth lying below. On the leads it was impossible to see anything. From parapet to parapet, from battlement to battlement, from embrasure to embrasure was to the eye a purposeless void. It was impossible to guide the movements except by the sense of touch; for although when one gazed downward on the roofs below, the chequered glow hanging above the street gave the eye purpose, when one drew back from the parapet all was dark, the dull reflection of the city's light did not reach upward far enough to illume the open space within the four walls. Yet there was life and motion on those leads, in that darkness set in the solitude. A heavy, slow tread could be heard now and then, and now and then groans, and now and then words of protest and anger, bitter reproach, tremulous entreaty, fierce invective, and passionate lamentation. The voice was high and quavering like that of a woman overwrought, or a man overwrought or broken down by sorrows or by years. Then these sounds would cease, the footsteps, the groans, the words, and the silence of a blind cave in which no water dripped, and which harboured only the whispering and confounded echoes of a far-off stream, fell upon the place and filled out the measure of its isolation. The slow measured tread of the policeman broke in once more upon the listening ear, gained, reached its height, and was lost in the still ocean of darkness. "I am accursed. Nothing favours me. All is against me. No wind! No rain! Wind and rain are my only friends. They are the only things which can now be of service to me, and for a week there has been neither." The querulous, complaining voice was hushed. The shuffling feet moved rapidly across the leads. Then all was still once more. Stop! what is that? In the street below an echo to the wail above? No words can be heard, yet the purport of the voice is unmistakable. The listener catches the import of those tones. He has heard similar sounds before. "It is a woman," he says. "Men never whine here, and at this hour, going that way! In a quarter of an hour it will be all over with her. A quarter of an hour! How long have I been here, slaving and toiling day and night, carrying away bit by bit what lies between me and affluence, and to think that in a quarter of an hour, from one bell of the clock of St. Paul's to the next, I might find an end to all my hopes, and fears, and labours, and lie at peace, as far as this world is. Hark! Why does she pause beneath? She cannot suspect, no one can suspect why I am here. All the dreary months of terror and sweat that I have spent here never drew from me one word, one sign which could give a clue." The figure of a woman in the street below could be seen dimly on the other side of the way. She leaned against the wall, irresolute or faint. She moaned, but uttered no word. In a few moments she placed her hand against the wall and pushed herself from it as though repelling a final entreaty. Then she staggered down the street and into a narrow laneway that led to the river. "She is gone," said the voice in the darkness. "She is taking all her troubles with her to the greasy Thames. Why should not I, too, take all my troubles thither and end my care? A quarter past! Before the half-hour strikes, I and my secret, my great secret, might be gone for ever. Has she a secret, or is it only the poor want of bread and shelter, or is it unkindness, a hope destroyed, love outraged, affection slighted? Why should I inquire?" From the narrow lane into which she had struck, a moan reached the listener's ears. "She is in no great haste. This is not the despair of sudden ruin to life or hopes. Her misfortunes have crawled gradually upon her, with palsied feet and blows that maddened because they never ceased--not brave blows that drive one furious and to swift despair. I am the victim of this slow despair. Why should I drag out wearily, toilfully, in terrors that I make myself, the end of my old life?" Again the woman groaned. "Curse her! Can she not go? Who minds a woman more or less in the world? The world is overstocked with them. No one is here to pity her. Why should she pity herself? It would be a mercy to her to take her and lead her to the brink and push her in. Why, it would shorten all her pains. Curse her, there she groans again. No rain, no wind to help me, and only these groans for a goad to my despair. I will not hear them any longer. My own troubles are more than I can bear. Stay! That is a lucky thought. I'll go down and tell her that the police are here, coming for her, and that she has not a moment to spare." Again the woman's voice was heard. "Forty years ago I could not take that voice so coldly, for all women were then to me the sisters of one; my sweetheart then, my wife, the mother of my children, now the tenant of the neglected grave miles and miles and miles away out there. Now all the children dwell in houses such as hers, and with her and them went out the life of me. I never cared to see the younger brood, for when my wife died it seemed to me that all who loved me, or whom I loved, came to me but to die, and so I steeled my heart against the new brood and slunk into myself, shut myself out from them and all the world, and took to lonely ways and solitude until I came to this." For a while no sound reached the ear. At last there was a sob, not a woman's voice this time, but a man's. "I hardened my heart against them, and the world seemed to have hardened its heart against me. I am lonely and alone. There is no wind. There is no rain. There has been no wind or rain for weeks. For weeks I have been ready for either, and either will not come. Twice a day the river gains its full height, asking me to go with it out of my loneliness and my toil. Heaven will not send rain or wind to me. Heaven took my wife and happiness. Heaven sent the river to me. I have often thought of going. I cannot leave this place and live. I cannot stay in this place and live. Hark! I hear the first rippling of the river as it turns its footsteps towards the sea. What sound is that? She! Five minutes by the clock and all will be over with her. What? Striking half-past? Idiot that I am! Why should I burden myself with the despairs of another hour? I shall await the five minutes. For I should not care to be--disturbed. I should not care to hear or see--anything of her. I am alone. I would go alone. I am in no humour for company. I am too big with my own griefs to care for those of others. I have feasted on sorrow until I have grown enormous, colossal, distended beyond human shape. Let my great secret die with me. Let me die alone. I am a giant in the land of woes. I am Giant Despair. She has closed the door behind her ere this. It is time for me to knock. I have no farewells to take. That is lucky. Not one heart in all London will beat one beat more or one beat less when I am gone." The feet trod the leads more vigorously than before. Then a step was heard descending the ladder.