Yet amid so much that was bad needy respectability also found a home.
Under some of the roofs abode pure and virtuous souls whose presence
there was due to the iron hand of necessity, and to that alone. Families
from decayed villages--families of that once bulky, but now
nearly extinct, section of village society called "liviers," or
lifeholders--copyholders and others, whose roof-trees had fallen for
some reason or other, compelling them to quit the rural spot that had
been their home for generations--came here, unless they chose to lie
under a hedge by the wayside.
The inn called Peter's finger was the church of Mixen Lane.
It was centrally situate, as such places should be, and bore about the
same social relation to the Three Mariners as the latter bore to
the King's Arms. At first sight the inn was so respectable as to be
puzzling. The front door was kept shut, and the step was so clean that
evidently but few persons entered over its sanded surface. But at the
corner of the public-house was an alley, a mere slit, dividing it from
the next building. Half-way up the alley was a narrow door, shiny and
paintless from the rub of infinite hands and shoulders. This was the
actual entrance to the inn.
A pedestrian would be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and
then, in a moment, he would vanish, causing the gazer to blink like
Ashton at the disappearance of Ravenswood.
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