At its southward
extremity the street ceases on a sudden, and the broad flow of the Ouse,
the trees, the meadows, the public-walk on one bank and the towing-path
on the other, open to view.
Here, where the street ends, and on the side of it furthest from the
river, a narrow little lane leads up to the paved footway surmounting
the ancient Walls of York. The one small row of buildings, which is all
that the lane possesses, is composed of cheap lodging-houses, with
an opposite view, at the distance of a few feet, of a portion of the
massive city wall. This place is called Rosemary Lane. Very little
light enters it; very few people live in it; the floating population of
Skeldergate passes it by; and visitors to the Walk on the Walls, who use
it as the way up or the way down, get out of the dreary little passage
as fast as they can.
The door of one of the houses in this lost corner of York opened softly
on the evening of the twenty-third of September, eighteen hundred and
forty-six; and a solitary individual of the male sex sauntered into
Skeldergate from the seclusion of Rosemary Lane.
Turning northward, this person directed his steps toward the bridge
over the Ouse and the busy center of the city.
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