The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 289: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XX THE BURKER THE scene which we are about to describe occurred on the same evening as Christina’s visit to the pawnbroker. It was between nine and ten o’clock that a man of most ill-favoured appearance emerged from one of the low courts opening from the New Cut, Lambeth, and bent his way in the direction of the maze of densely populated streets and alleys which lie between the lower parts of the Waterloo and Westminster Roads. This man was about forty years of age, and it would be impossible to conceive a human exterior so repulsive, or so fearfully calculated to make the blood of a beholder curdle in the veins. There are some physiog- nomies which impress one with a capacity for particular sorts of mischief; there are features, for instance, which in- dicate low cunning, others denote violent passions, and there are others which reveal an instinctive thirst for blood. But all the most terrible attributes of the human mind were con- centrated in the expression of that man’s countenance. He had a small snub nose, which appeared to have been stuck on to his face as if it were an afterthought of nature; his mouth was large, and was furnished with a set of sharp pointed sharklike teeth, which being naturally white, and remaining so in defiance of neglect, glittered horribly be- tween his coarse, thick lips. His eyes were of the dark colour and expression of a reptile’s, and the brows, by being traced irregularly, — or else being brought down by an habitual lowering regard, — added to the shuddering sensation pro- duced by a look from those horrible eyes. His hair — of a light brown, and already turning gray — was completely matted; his whiskers, of a darker colour, were equally ragged and unkempt. He was dressed in a loose drab 258 Gomichbooks (E(0) a ——