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He went on, twisting and turning through the blurring fog-haze. On the outskirts of the coast—Barbary Coast—within sound of St. Mary's bells, also within sound of the jingle-banging music from gay houses, he turned up a low flight of broad stone steps and pushed at an oaken door, broad and barred with iron hinges, studded by nail-heads, as if to keep out feudal raiders.

The house had been originally built for a lucky miner, who wanted plenty of breathing-space in his rooms and halls. Like other houses near by that had formerly been pretentious, it had fallen into a bad state financially. A shade too close to a wholly respectable neighbourhood to be used as yet by avowed sinners, it was far nearer the bad ones of the city than could be lived in by those who wished to appear good; and so, for all of its remnants of grandeur, it had become a sort of second-class rooming-house, much used by officers and masters of ships—fellows who seldom care a rap for what landmen think of their goodness or badness.