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The Monument, that great column to the top of which she had so recently climbed, was, she remembered, close to London Bridge. Therefore she must now be standing near the very same spot as that from which only this morning she had looked over London. It was an amazing thought.

She remembered the countless spires and domes and towers which rose far above their roofs, and the swarming traffic in all the streets.

Upon what a different scene she looked now! In place of the miles and miles of streets and houses, she saw along a narrow strip of the shore, right and left of the wooden bridge, a few steep lanes or alleys, lined with poor low dwellings. A few wharves and quays stretched along the bank of the river just below. There certainly a busy life went on, for men were loading and unloading boats. Behind the lanes leading down to the river, there was a belt of cultivated land, dotted over with gleaming one-storied dwellings which Godmother said were Roman villas, and beyond them, enclosing all the cultivated land, rose a strong wall with towers at intervals. But behind the wall came a long stretch of marshy ground, leading to the edge of a huge forest—a dark and gloomy and endless forest, clothing a line of hills, and stretching away, away, as far as eye could see.