This is not what Rogers wants to know, however. What Rogers wants to know, is, whether you _will_ clear the way here, some of you, or whether you won’t; because if you don’t do it right on end, he’ll lock you up! ‘What! _You_ are there, are you, Bob Miles? You haven’t had enough of it yet, haven’t you? You want three months more, do you? Come away from that gentleman! What are you creeping round there for?’ ‘What am I a doing, thinn, Mr. Rogers?’ says Bob Miles, appearing, villainous, at the end of a lane of light, made by the lantern. ‘I’ll let you know pretty quick, if you don’t hook it. WILL you hook it?’ A sycophantic murmur rises from the crowd. ‘Hook it, Bob, when Mr. Rogers and Mr. Field tells you! Why don’t you hook it, when you are told to?’ The most importunate of the voices strikes familiarly on Mr. Rogers’s ear. He suddenly turns his lantern on the owner. ‘What! _You_ are there, are you, Mister Click? You hook it too—come!’ ‘What for?’ says Mr. Click, discomfited. ‘You hook it, will you!’ says Mr. Rogers with stern emphasis. Both Click and Miles _do_ ‘hook it,’ without another word, or, in plainer English, sneak away. ‘Close up there, my men!’ says Inspector Field to two constables on duty who have followed. ‘Keep together, gentlemen; we are going down here. Heads!’ Saint Giles’s church strikes half-past ten. We stoop low, and creep down a precipitous flight of steps into a dark close cellar. There is a fire. There is a long deal table. There are benches. The cellar is full of company, chiefly very young men in various conditions of dirt and raggedness. Some are eating supper. There are no girls or women present. Welcome to Rats’ Castle, gentlemen, and to this company of noted thieves! ‘Well, my lads! How are you, my lads? What have you been doing to-day? Here’s some company come to see you, my lads!—_There’s_ a plate of beefsteak, sir, for the supper of a fine young man! And there’s a mouth for a steak, sir! Why, I should be too proud of such a mouth as that, if I had it myself! Stand up and show it, sir! Take off your cap. There’s a fine young man for a nice little party, sir! An’t he?’