In addition to these peculiarities, we need hardly mention that the funeral bell was at any time a grateful sound to his ears, seldom failing to call him forth from his home, whatever his employment might happen to be.
Then again he loved to contemplate a batch of dirty urchins, in all the enjoyment of mud and mire, freedom and mischief, revelling in undisturbed possession of the kennel or the road, and to speculate upon the chances against one-third of them reaching maturity, or their probable fate if they did so.
Following the clue given him by the anonymous communication, and which he had received a few hours before he announced the news it contained at the Falcon, he had made a search through the locality hinted at. The note, which was vaguely and notoriously worded, had pointed to some house in the suburbs; and, after duly calling over the different persona whom he considered likely to have been the writer of the billet, he fixed it upon a crazy, half insane fellow, living in a lone house in Henley Street.
Accordingly, when the shadows of evening descended, he went prying about, and peeping into all the windows, and listening at all the doors on either side that street. "Wat Murdake," he said to himself, "is a maniac,—a dangerous fellow at times, having fits of violence quite awful to look on. He killed his wife with a shoemaker's awl, pierced her ear when she was asleep,—at least, so it is said, and he confesses it even now in his ravings,—but that's nought. Many an old host that I know would be glad to do the same, if they dared, for the women do drive men to desperate deeds with that unruly member, the tongue. Wat Murdake is a dangerous fellow at times, and exceedingly mad always, but then he is pretty cunning, and keepeth a sure eye upon his neighbour. An I cannot find these plague spots, I will seek him and make inquiry, for 'tis good I saw into the matter at once.
"Ah! what's that I hear? A scream? No, it's only a child squalling, and the mother singing it to sleep with a merry song. There's no misery there. So pass we on to the next. What's that, a groan? No, it's a fellow practising on the bass-viol. All right I trow there; where music is, contentment rests, and no plague. What's this?" he continued, listening at the next house, "lamentations and words of woe? No, it's man and wife quarrelling. Ah! and there they go to blows. There is no real misery there, but what they make for themselves; they've plague enough, but not the plague I seek. Pass we on again. What's here? the bones rattling? Yes, dicing, drinking, and brawl. It's not there. It may come to that, but they don't begin so. There'll be death, perhaps, in the house, but it will be by violence, not disease—to-night, to-morrow, perhaps; who knows? And so Master Dismal passed on from door to door, taking his cue of good or ill from the employment of the inmates of the different houses. At length he came to a lone, squalid-looking hut, the last but one in the street, standing in its own untrimmed and neglected garden; a ruin with walls so rent as to shew one-half of its heavy-beamed rooms in a skeleton state; the remainder being patched up to expel the wind and rain, and reclaimed, as it were, in a slovenly manner, from the general state of decay. The toad sat and croaked in the long damp grass, and the lizard crawled over the muddy pathway to the door, as Dismal stopped and listened.
"This looks like business," he said, "I quite forgot this house of ill-omen. Ah! what a dirty-mantled pond in the garden! Here we have it, sure enough! there's no mistaking these sounds! Let me see, this is the residence of Smite Drear and his family, the most drunken, ill-conducted, dirty, evil-minded lot in all Warwickshire—the man a vile caitiff, a puritan whose tongue is ruin; the woman a slanderer also, and a termagant; the children thieves, liars, and imps of ill. I'm sure it's here; I know it's here; it must be here; it ought to be here; it is here. Yea, and here it is, sure enough! If I could only get a peep into the interior, I should know in a minute. Let me see; where's my pouncet-box? Ah! there's another groan, and the sob of a female! I hear some one praying too; rather unusual that, I trow. I must go in. But no, I cannot get in, the door is fastened; I'll knock."
It was some time before the summons of Master Dismal was answered. But at last the owner of the hovel removed a broken shutter from an upper window, and thrusting out his head, growled a malediction upon the person disturbing him.
"Pass on," he said, "and trouble us not."
"I would crave permission," said Dismal, "to pay a visit on matters——"
"Crave nothing here," said Drear, "Seek nothing here. Sickness and death are within our doors: we are accursed."