CHAPTER XIII.
'He set in order many proverbs.' It is London in October--two months further on in the story.
Bede's Inn has this peculiarity, that it faces, receives from, and discharges into a bustling thoroughfare speaking only of wealth and respectability, whilst its postern abuts on as crowded and poverty-stricken a network of alleys as are to be found anywhere in the metropolis.

The moral consequences are, first, that those who occupy chambers in the Inn may see a great deal of shirtless humanity's habits and enjoyments without doing more than look down from a back window; and second they may hear wholesome though unpleasant social reminders through the medium of a harsh voice, an unequal footstep, the echo of a blow or a fall, which originates in the person of some drunkard or wife-beater, as he crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square.
Characters of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little foxhole of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements proper to the Inn are most orderly.

On the fine October evening on which we follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter is sitting on a stool under a sycamore-tree in the midst, with a little cane in his hand.

We notice the thick coat of soot upon the branches, hanging underneath them in flakes, as in a chimney.

The blackness of these boughs does not at present improve the tree--nearly forsaken by its leaves as it is--but in the spring their green fresh beauty is made doubly beautiful by the contrast.