Oxford Street itself, indeed, bore a villainous reputation. It stretched somewhat on the borders of the town, with wild and wooded country going northwards from it, and was handy therefore to the gentry whose profession it was to cut purses from the skirts of civilization. Latterly, its heterogeneous domiciles had shown a tendency to increase and multiply, and, by adding to their number on either side the way, to extend the boundaries of the comparative security which obtained about the central regions of Westminster and Whitehall. But it was still a perilous district, the very expression and moral of which appeared epitomized in the sign which swung on a high gallows, beside a wooden water-trough, before the front of our inn, and which depicted a poor unhappy citizen bearing upon his suffering shoulders a drunken scold. In the neighbourhood of the building clustered, like disreputable relations, a knot of tenements, which included a pawnbroker’s and a gin-shop; and southwards from it zigzagged a muddy bridle-way--known appropriately as Hog Lane--which, traversing a motley course, half town, half rookery, debouched finally upon the village of Charing, where in an open place stood the monument with its gilt cross. So, approximately, appeared this particle of our London in the year following that of the King’s Grace’s restoration, A.D. 1661. It is easier to explain a frog of to-day out of a Pliocene leviathan than it is to trace the growth of a huge metropolis from such paltry beginnings. The tendency of Nature is to reduce from the unwieldy to the workable, while that of man is to magnify his productions out of all proportion with the simple necessities they are wanted to supply. That is why towns increase while animals grow smaller. The yard of “The Mischief” Inn was fairly crowded on that particular June morning which witnessed the encounter between its landlord and Mrs. Moll Davis. This young lady had come to town out of Wiltshire, by waggon, some fortnight or more earlier, and, putting up at the inn, had succeeded already in outstaying a welcome which was wont to be continued to such angels only as came franked with a sufficiency of their golden namesakes. In short, Mrs. Davis could not, or would not, pay her score; and, since she failed to quit the landlord, and he declined to release her without settlement, a state of deadlock had arisen between them, which seemed to promise no conclusion but through the better ability of one or the other to “throw” its adversary in a wrestle of wit--a contest in which the lady, at least, need expect no “law.” And it was at this juncture that Mr. George Hamilton appeared upon the scene.