We turned off the Whitechapel road into Baker street, up Charles into Wellington street. The neighborhood was a poor desolate one, and every building, and every stone in the street, with the offal in the gutters, spoke of poverty and wretched

ness.

Now and then a policeman spoke to us and looked sharply at me, but always they seemed civil and obliging.

The district we were now traversing was a kind of debatable land between Whitechapel and Bethnal Green. The streets, or rather lanes, ran across and along at angles and in circles of a perfect maze tending to confound ways that were well calculated to puzzle a stranger.

The lanes were, with few exceptions, not more than two or three hundred feet long, and the odor from the cellars and lodging houses was miasmatic. Shouts and yells and curses came from drunken male brutes who passed us, and now and then a wretched looking outcast of a woman, hideous with filth and bloated with gin, stole like a shadow from some of the low public houses that were, in accordance with the beer-house act, putting up their shutters.

A woman passed us with a stone bottle in one hand and a herring in the other, while we stood looking up and down the narrow street. Her eyes were bloodshot and her face seamed with dissipation and wretchedness, while she grasped the stone bottle hard, and seemed ready to defend her precious property with her life.

"Wot have you got there," said my companion seizing the stone jug and holding it to his nose. The woman was almost frenzied at this attempt, as she believed it was, to deprive her of what was far dearer to her than her life. "Give me

back my gin!" she screamed, and dashed forward like a tigress to claw his eyes out. The sergeant seemed satisfied, and handed her back the stone vessel with a motion of disgust.

"That'll do, ole lady," that White Satan nor me.

hall, when you drinks it.

said he, "I'd rather you'd drink

I pitys yer precious witles, that's Where do you live?"

"I live's in Purty Bill's lodgin.' I'll show it to you for a

brown. Come along." We followed her for a short distance, and now and then, as we passed the doorways and courts, some low blackguard would vent a little of his vile or rough humor upon our devoted heads, merely to keep his intellect in play.

"I say, ye pair of duffers, give us tuppence to get a pot o' beer, wont ye; come here, and I'll cash yer check hif you 'ave no small change," said a cut-throat looking rascal of large build who was lying across a door that seemed to open into the earth somewhere. He half rose; fell back on the broken cavern door stupefied with liquor, and began to snore like a wild beast gorged with blood.

"This is an awful district, sir," said the detective. doesn't stand on ceremony with you here."

"They

We passed further down the dark street, and a very dark street it was. The atmosphere was very different from that which hung over London Bridge. The air was noisome, and the collected offal in the gutters sent up a frightful stench to the heavens. At the end of the street was a cul de sac, and before we came to it my conductor stopped at a passage, dim under the midnight sky, which ran back for some distance; I could not tell how far, owing to the darkness.

We passed into the court, which seemed to yawn wider as one progressed, between three-storied, tumble-down, dirty brick buildings, and finally we found ourselves in a yard about a hundred feet square, from the opposite side of whose buildings clothes lines depended covered with canvass jackets, ragged highlows, aprons, and two or three sou'westers, beside a lot of female articles of under-linen. There were barrows, hand carts, small jackass carts and baskets, with a few empty barrels piled up in a confused mass in the corner of the yard. Cabbage leaves, bones of fish and animals, potato skins-the remains of carniverous appetites-were strewed all round.

The detective had by this time lit a lantern which he had concealed in his breast, and thus I was enabled to look around me. He said, "This is a rum spot; but never mind, it's safe enough. Now dy'e see that cellar-that's where we are a goin' to spend an hour or two. Come along."

He pointed in the direction of the cellar, or rather an opening in the ground, at the further corner of the yard, from whose bowels issued slanting streaks of light, shouts of laughter, and yells indicative of mad revelry. Groping our way carefully over the heaps of rubbish, and around the vehicles and barrels, we arrived at the cellar, which had for an opening an aperture about six feet wide by five feet in length. The broken wooden stairs leading to the bottom had some fifteen steps.

We descended and found the door at the lowest step barring the entrance. It was fastened, and had a dirty, impenetrable pane of glass as a watchhole for the use of those inside, so that nothing could be seen from the outside of the door. We gave the door a kick, and then the shouting and laughing seemed to stop very suddenly, and there was a hustling and running about inside which betokened preparation.

A face appeared at the pane of glass, and, after a scrutiny of a minute or two, the door went back on its hinges with a grating sound. A big bullet-head protruded itself, and a voice said:

"Who is that ere? Wot does you want, and who the d-l send you at this time o' night a disturbin' of honest people in their comfortable beds?"

“Bill, its ‘Faking Johnny' as wants to hold a few moments conversation with you. The queen has just sent me with a patent of nobility for you, from Buckingham Palace. You are to be made a barronnight right hoff when you reforms," said the detective, in a jocular way, as he descended into the cellar and faced the proprietor of the den, who held a halfpenny candle above his head to get a look at us both.

The master of the mansion finally recognized my companion, but did not seem at all well pleased with his visit.

"Well," he said, in a very gruff voice," is hit bizness or pleasure? Vich? Kase, hif hits bizness you must 'elp yourself."

"Oh, pleasure by all means, Purty Bill," said the sergeant, "myself and friend here, who is a son of Henry Clay, as was

President of the United States of America, just wants to see how the fun is goin' on to-night, and as I knew you kept a fust-class place, Bill, I thought I would bring him around to see you. He has called on the Queen, Mr. Bright, Mr. Gladstone, the Hemperor of the French, and he expressed a great desire to see Purty Bill;' so here we are."

The hideous vagabond seemed touched by this piece of insidious flattery, and said in a modified tone:

"Oh, well, that's fair enough. I don't hask hanything better. But ye see I thought you might ha' wanted some of my lodgers, and so many of them have been done for lately that they are getting suspicious of my honesty, and I have to be careful. Come this way," and he held the halfpenny candle over his head, which gave me a chance to observe him. The man was about six feet two inches in height, and much in form of shoulders like an ox, with loins like a prize-fighter. The face was pitted terribly with small-pox, his entire face was

seared, and even the corners of his eyebrows seemed eaten away by the awful disease. Hence his name of "Purty Bill." His eyes were of a greenish blue, and his attire was that of a costermonger; a smock of canvass, and knee breeches and huge shoes, whose heavy nails made rapid incisions in the clay floor of the long, dark passage through which we had to pass until we came to still another door. This door was not a door; in fact it was only a few planks strongly nailed together, and was not more than four feet high, so that we were all compelled, as "Purty Bill" lifted the latch, to put our feet in first, and making half circles of our bodies, we entered, and after descending three or four flagged steps we were at last in the cellar and establishment proper over which "Purty Bill" claimed a proprietary interest.

It was one of the strangest sights I ever saw-the interior of this Wild Beast's Den. It was a huge cellar formerly used as a brewery, of perhaps a hundred by seventy-five feet in dimension.

The ceiling, or, rather, the rough, unplaned beams which supported the roof above us, gave an appearance of great strength to the place. There was a large fireplace in the center of the cellar, around which fifty or sixty persons sat, of all ages and of both sexes. The floor was of damp clay, smooth and trodden by the feet of countless thieves, vagabonds, and prostitutes. The corners of the cellar were buried in darkness, while the center of the cavern, near the fireplace, was bright with the flames of a fire of logs, which threw a flickering light on the wooden beams, the broken chairs and stools, the pewter pots in the hands of the lodgers, and on many faces stained with dirt and ploughed up with crime and misery. There were thirty or forty berths roughly constructed as they are in the emigrant steerage of a Liverpool packet, and a heap of dirty straw in each indicated that they were used as beds by the occupants of the apartments. There was a large black pot hanging from a big hook, which depended from the brick chimney, and from this pot came a steaming odor of soup, or stew of some kind. The majority of the lodgers were sitting