In the chapter describing the flight of Bill Sikes, we read that, on leaving London behind, he shaped his course for Hatfield. "It was nine o'clock at night when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and, plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some of the country labourers were drinking before it. They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the farthest corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog, to whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time." Here he met the pedlar with his infallible composition for removing blood-stains. This particular public-house is no doubt the Eight Bells, a picturesque old house which still remains on the spot where Dickens accurately located it. It is a quaint little building with a red-tiled roof and dormer windows, and local tradition assigns it as that at which Bill Sikes sought refuge for a short time before continuing his journey to St. Albans, enabling Hatfield to claim it as a veritable Dickens landmark, together with that other, the churchyard, where Mrs. Lirriper's husband was buried. CHAPTER III NICHOLAS NICKLEBY THE SARACEN'S HEAD, SNOW HILL The Saracen's Head Inn, Snow Hill, long since demolished, is familiar to all readers of _Nicholas Nickleby_, because it was the hotel from which Squeers took coach with his boys for Dotheboys Hall; and, but for the fact, the name of Saracen's Head would recall little or nothing to the ordinary Londoner. It stood on Snow Hill or Snore Hill, as it was called in the very early days, and its exact location was two or three doors from St. Sepulchre's Church, down the hill, and was one of London's oldest and most historic inns, dating back to the 12th century. The first mention of it that we can find is in a volume by John Lydgate, the Benedictine monk who flourished in the early part of the 15th century, who is best remembered by his poem, "The London Lyckpenny." He tells the story of the origin of the name, which is interesting as fixing an early date at which the inn existed; even if it cannot be vouched for as correct in face of the fact that others have been suggested, it is at least as plausible.