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12 |Now back to your regularly scheduled fiction…
17 |It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional 19 | intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for 20 | it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the house-tops, and fiercely 21 | agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. Through one 22 | of the obscurest quarters of London, and among haunts little loved by the gentlemen of the 23 | police, a man, evidently of the lowest orders, was wending his solitary way. He stopped 24 | twice or thrice at different shops and houses of a description correspondent with the 25 | appearance of the quartier in which they were situated, and tended inquiry for some 26 | article or another which did not seem easily to be met with. All the answers he received 27 | were couched in the negative; and as he turned from each door he muttered to himself, in 28 | no very elegant phraseology, his disappointment and discontent. At length, at one house, 29 | the landlord, a sturdy butcher, after rendering the same reply the inquirer had hitherto 30 | received, added, "But if this vill do as vell, Dummie, it is quite at your sarvice!" 31 | Pausing reflectively for a moment, Dummie responded that he thought the thing proffered 32 | might do as well; and thrusting it into his ample pocket, he strode away with as rapid a 33 | motion as the wind and the rain would allow. He soon came to a nest of low and dingy 34 | buildings, at the entrance to which, in half-effaced characters, was written "Thames 35 | Court." Halting at the most conspicuous of these buildings, an inn or alehouse, through 36 | the half-closed windows of which blazed out in ruddy comfort the beams of the hospitable 37 | hearth, he knocked hastily at the door. He was admitted by a lady of a certain age, and 38 | endowed with a comely rotundity of face and person.
39 |"Hast got it, Dummie?" said she, quickly, as she closed the door on the guest.
40 |"Noa, noa! not exactly; but I thinks as 'ow—"
41 |