"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." [Illustration: PURTY BILL SHOWING US IN.] 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 half-penny 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.