I next conceived it a foreign kind of place, different altogether from that home growth of ours, the Tower of London, I topped it with a multitude of domes of pumpkin or turban shape, resembling the Kremlin of Moscow, which had once leapt up in the eye of Winter, glowing like a million pine-torches, and flung shadows of stretching red horses on the black smoke-drift.  But what was the Kremlin, that had seen a city perish, to this Bench where my father languished!  There was no comparing them for tragic horror.  And the Kremlin had snow-fields around it; this Bench was caught out of sight, hemmed in by an atmosphere thick as Charon breathed; it might as well be underground.

‘Oh! it’s London,’ Temple went on, correcting his incorrigible doubts about it.  He jumped on the platform; we had to call out not to lose one another.  ‘I say, Richie, this is London,’ he said, linking his arm in mine:  ’you know by the size of the station; and besides, there’s the fog.  Oh! it’s London.  We’ve overshot it, we’re positively in London.’

I could spare no sympathy for his feelings, and I did not respond to his inquiring looks.  Now that we were here I certainly wished myself away, though I would not have retreated, and for awhile I was glad of the discomforts besetting me; my step was hearty as I led on, meditating upon asking some one the direction to the Bench presently.  We had to walk, and it was nothing but traversing on a slippery pavement atmospheric circles of black brown and brown red, and sometimes a larger circle of pale yellow; the colours of old bruised fruits, medlars, melons, and the smell of them; nothing is more desolate.  Neither of us knew where we were, nor where we were going.  We struggled through an interminable succession of squalid streets, from the one lamp visible to its neighbour in the darkness:  you might have fancied yourself peering at the head of an old saint on a smoky canvas; it was like the painting of light rather than light.  Figures rushed by; we saw no faces.

Temple spoke solemnly:  ’ Our dinner-hour at home is half-past six.’  A street-boy overheard him and chaffed him.  Temple got the worst of it, and it did him good, for he had the sweetest nature in the world.  We declined to be attended by link-boys; they would have hurt our sense of independence.  Possessed of a sovereign faith that, by dint of resolution, I should ultimately penetrate to the great square enclosing the Bench, I walked with the air of one who had the map of London in his eye and could thread it blindfold.  Temple was thereby deceived into thinking that I must somehow have learnt the direction I meant to take, and knew my way, though at the slightest indication of my halting and glancing round his suspicions began to boil, and he was for asking some one the name of the ground we stood on:  he murmured, ’Fellows get lost in London.’  By this time he clearly understood that I had come to London on purpose:  he could not but be aware of the object of my coming, and I was too proud, and he still too delicate, to allude to it.