The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 163: what you’re looking at

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

132 THE COURT OF LONDON lingered on the two houses of which he had seen the interior: namely, the one whence he had just emerged, and that where he had been incarcerated. Lights gleamed from the upper windows of the latter; and Page thought within himself, “The miscreants in those chambers little suspect that their accursed subterranean cell is now empty!” Away he sped from the court, the name of which he vainly endeavoured to decipher beneath the entrance archway where it was painted; and thence he emerged into a long, narrow, and unpaved street, the aspect of whose houses confirmed him in his opinion that he was in some low neigh- bourhood. On he went at random, in the hope of finding a hackney-coach stand, and not choosing to ask where he was of the few stragglers whom he met, for fear of exciting some suspicion which might lead him into fresh embarrassments, — on he went, we say, penetrating through a maze of streets and alleys and little thoroughfares, none of the names whereof could he possibly ascertain in the darkness of the night. Suddenly the clock of some neighbouring church pro- claimed the hour of two in the morning; and in a few minutes Page found himself in the immediate vicinity of a dock, which he knew to be in the district of Wapping. It was, then, in the eastern quarters of London that the den existed where he had been imprisoned; but were he asked to retrace his steps from the point he had now gained to the place whence he had escaped, the endeavour would have proved utterly abortive. His course was, however, at present clear enough; and in about three-quarters of an hour he emerged upon Tower Hill. There he was fortunate enough to discover a hackney- coach, which set him down at the George and Blue Boar just as the thousand clocks of the metropolis were striking three. GomiGc .oOoks (Go)