The next house we called at in Walker's Court was much like the first in appearance—very little left but the walls, and that little, such as none but the neediest would pick up, if it was thrown out to the streets. The only person in the place was a pale, crippled woman; her sick head, lapped in a poor white clout, swayed languidly to and fro. Besides being a cripple, she had been ill six years, and now her husband, also, was taken ill. He had just crept off to fetch medicine for the two. We did not stop here long. The hand of the Ancient Master was visible in that pallid face; those sunken eyes, so full of deathly langour, seemed to be wandering about in dim, flickering gazes, upon the confines of an unknown world. I think that woman will soon be "where the weary are at rest." As we came out, she said, slowly, and in broken, painful utterances, that "she hoped the Lord would open the heavens for those who had helped them." A little lower down the court, we peeped in at two other doorways. The people were well known to my companion, who has the charge of visiting this part of the ward. Leaning against the door-cheek of one of these dim, unwholesome hovels, he said, "Well, missis; how are you getting on?" There was a tall, thin woman inside. She seemed to be far gone in some exhausting illness. With slow difficulty she rose to her feet, and, setting her hands to her sides, gasped out, "My coals are done." He made a note, and said, I'll send you some more." Her other wants were regularly seen to on a certain day every week. Ours was an accidental visit. We now turned up to another nook of the court, where my companion told me there was a very bad case. He found the door fast. We looked through the window into that miserable man-nest. It was cold, gloomy, and bare. As Corrigan says, in the "Colleen Bawn," "There was nobody in—but the fire—and that was gone out." As we came away, a stalwart Irishman met us at a turn of the court, and said to my companion, "Sure, ye didn't visit this house." " Not to-day;" replied the visitor. "I'll come and see you at the usual time." The people in this house were not so badly off as some others. We came down the steps of the court into the fresher air of Friargate again.

Our next walk was to Heatley Street. As we passed by a cluster of starved loungers, we overheard one of them saying to another, "Sitho, yon's th' soup-maister, gooin' a-seein' somebry." Our time was getting short, so we only called at one house in Heatley Street, where there was a family of eleven—a decent family, a well-kept and orderly household, though now stript almost to the bare ground of all worldly possession, sold, bitterly, piecemeal, to help to keep the bare life together, as sweetly as possible, till better days. The eldest son is twenty-seven years of age. The whole family has been out of work for the last seventeen weeks, and before that, they had been working only short time for seven months. For thirteen weeks they had lived upon less than one shilling a head per week, and I am not sure that they did not pay the rent out of that; and now the income of the whole eleven is under 16s., with rent to pay. In this house they hold weekly prayer-meetings. Thin picking—one shilling a week, or less—for all expenses, for one person. It is easier to write about it than to feel what it means, unless one has tried it for three or four months. Just round the corner from Heatley Street, we stopped at the open door of a very little cottage. A good-looking young Irishwoman sat there, upon a three-legged stool, suckling her child. She was clean; and had an intelligent look. "Let's see, missis," said the visitor, "what do you pay for this nook?" "We pay eighteenpence a week—and they will have it—my word." "Well, an' what income have you now?" "We have eighteenpence a head in the week, an' the rent to pay out o' that, or else they'll turn us out." Of course, the visitor knew that this was true; but he wanted me to hear the people speak for themselves. "Let's see, Missis Burns, your husband's name is Patrick, isn't it?" " Yes, sir; Patrick Burns." "What! Patrick Burns, the famous foot-racer?" The little woman smiled bashfully, and replied, "Yes, sir; I suppose it is." With respect to what the woman said about having to pay her rent or turn out, I may remark, in passing, that I have not hitherto met with an instance in which any millowner, or wealthy man, having cottage property, has pressed the unemployed poor for rent. But it is well to remember that there is a great amount of cottage property in Preston, as in other manufacturing towns, which belongs to the more provident class of working men. These working men, now hard pressed by the general distress, have been compelled to fall back upon their little rentals, clinging to them as their last independent means of existence. They are compelled to this, for, if they cannot get work, they cannot get anything else, having property. These are becoming fewer, however, from day to day. The poorest are hanging a good deal upon those a little less poor than themselves; and every link in the lengthening chain of neediness is helping to pull down the one immediately above it. There is, also, a considerable amount of cottage property in Preston, belonging to building societies, which have enough to do to hold their own just now. And then there is always some cottage property in the hands of agents.

Leaving Heatley Street, we went to a place called "Seed's Yard." Here we called upon a clean old stately widow, with a calm, sad face. She had been long known, and highly respected, in a good street, not far off, where she had lived for twenty-four years, in fair circumstances, until lately. She had always owned a good houseful of furniture; but, after making bitter meals upon the gradual wreck of it, she had been compelled to break up that house, and retire with her five children to lodge with a lone widow in this little cot, not over three yards square, in "Seed's Yard," one of those dark corners into which decent poverty is so often found now, creeping unwillingly away from the public eye, in the hope of weathering the storm of adversity, in penurious independence. The old woman never would accept relief from the parish, although the whole family had been out of work for many months. One of the daughters, a clean, intelligent-looking young woman, about eighteen, sat at the table, eating a little bread and treacle to a cup of light-coloured tea, when we went in; but she blushed, and left off until we had gone—which was not long after. It felt almost like sacrilege to peer thus into the privacies of such people; but I hope they did not feel as if it had been done offensively. We called next at the cottage of a hand-loom weaver—a poor trade now in the best of times—a very poor trade—since the days when tattered old "Jem Ceawp" sung his pathetic song of "Jone o' Greenfeelt"—

"Aw'm a poor cotton weighver, as ony one knows;
We'n no meight i'th heawse, an' we'n worn eawt er clothes;
We'n live't upo nettles, while nettles were good;
An' Wayterloo porritch is th' most of er food;
This clemmin' and starvin',
Wi' never a farthin'—
It's enough to drive ony mon mad."

This family was four in number—man, wife, and two children. They had always lived near to the ground, for the husband's earnings at the loom were seldom more than 7s. for a full week. The wife told us that they were not receiving any relief, for she said that when her husband "had bin eawt o' wark a good while he turn't his hond to shaving;" and in this way the ingenious struggling fellow had scraped a thin living for them during many months. "But," said she, " it brings varra little in, we hev to trust so much. He shaves four on 'em for a haw-penny, an' there's a deal on 'em connot pay that. Yo know, they're badly off—(the woman seemed to think her circumstances rather above the common kind); an' then," continued she, "when they'n run up a shot for three-hawpence or twopence or so, they cannot pay it o' no shap, an' so they stoppen away fro th' shop. They cannot for shame come, that's heaw it is; so we lose'n their custom till sich times as summat turns up at they can raise a trifle to pay up wi'. . . . He has nobbut one razzor, but it'll be like to do." Hearken this, oh, ye spruce Figaros of the city, who trim the clean, crisp whiskers of the well-to-do! Hearken this, ye dainty perruquiers, "who look so brisk, and smell so sweet," and have such an exquisite knack of chirruping, and lisping, and sliding over the smooth edge of the under lip,—and, sometimes, agreeably too,—"an infinite deal of nothing,"—ye who clip and anoint the hair of Old England's curled darlings! Eight chins a penny; and three months' credit! A bodle a piece for mowing chins overgrown with hair like pin-wire, and thick with dust; how would you like that? How would you get through it all, with a family of four, and only one razor? The next place we called at was what my friend described, in words that sounded to me, somehow, like melancholy irony,—as "a poor provision shop." It was, indeed, a poor shop for provender. In the window, it is true, there were four or five empty glasses, where children's spice had once been. There was a little deal shelf here and there; but there were neither sand, salt, whitening, nor pipes. There was not the ghost of a farthing candle, nor a herring, nor a marble, nor a match, nor of any other thing, sour or sweet, eatable or saleable for other uses, except one small mug full of buttermilk up in a corner—the last relic of a departed trade, like the "one rose of the wilderness, left on its stalk to mark where a garden has been." But I will say more about this in the next chapter.