They had been refused lodging in the workhouse, and were going to pass the night in that situation.

As he came up to them, coarse jests, and snatches of low drinking-songs, ghastly as the laughter of lost spirits in the pit, mingled with the feeble wailings of some child of shame.

The vicar recollected how he had seen the same sight at the door of Kensington Workhouse, walking home one night in company with Luke Smith; and how, too, he had commented to him on that fearful sign of the times, and had somewhat unfairly drawn a contrast between the niggard cruelty of 'popular Protestantism,' and the fancied 'liberality of the middle age.' What wonder if his pupil had taken him at his word?
Delighted to escape from his own thoughts by anything like action, he pulled out his purse to give an alms.

There was no silver in it, but only some fifteen or twenty sovereigns, which he that day received as payment for some bitter reviews in a leading religious periodical.

Everything that night seemed to shame and confound him more.