The Freemason's Daughter: A Novel — page 118: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE FREEMASONS DAUGHTER. 109 and, like most men who have a hobby, he would have gone any length to ride it. Second reflection, however, convinced him that he was wrong ; the papers, if not already given up, were most likely on the officer’s person, who, having paid so much to obtain them, would not readily trust them from his possession. ‘Tim, therefore, instead of proceeding to the neigh- bourhood of the police-court, as he at first intended, entered a cellar at the bottom of a narrow court near his own residence on Shude Hill. The place was kept by an Irishman named Flanagan, called by the waisters, factory lads, and loose fish who frequented his esta- blishment, for shortness, Flin. Although the place was not absolutely disreputable, still Tim did not like to be seen entering it; and nothing but the certitude of meeting the person there whom, in his emergency, he was most anxious to find, could have induced him to do so. The room—if the long, low, damp, unwholesome re- cess might be called one—was lit with gas, which, from the narrowness of the court in which the house stood, and the smallness of the aperture called a window, supposed to admit both light and air, was necessary by day as well as by night. At low deal tables, ranged near the walls, were seated a promiscuous company of boys and girls, with a sprinkling of men and women, whose appearance denoted that they were not of the most reputable portion of society. The beverage gene- COniiclooecl SS (SO