By those who are familiar with the story it will be remembered that an early part of the plot leads one to suppose that Marion Jeddler had eloped with Michael Warden, when, as a matter of fact, she had merely escaped to her aunt. Leech, who was engaged as illustrator, was immensely busy, and only read so much of the story as seemed necessary for his purpose. As a result he was deceived, as Dickens intended his readers should be, and designed the double illustration here reproduced, in which the festivities to welcome the bridegroom at the top of the page {37} contrast with the flight of the bride in company with Michael Warden represented below. Thus was Dickens curiously “hoist with his own petard.” And the curious thing is that, notwithstanding the publicity given to the mistake in Forster’s _Life of Dickens_, this tragic woodcut, which wrongs poor Marion’s innocence and makes a hash of the whole story, is reproduced in the reprints up to this very day. The poor girl’s tragic figure remains, and seems likely to continue to do so, a victim to the stereotype. This episode is generally referred to as “Leech’s grave mistake,” and grave undoubtedly it was; but the matter has its bright side, which redounds to the credit of the great novelist. I take the liberty of quoting from what has always seemed to me a very noble letter when we remember that Dickens was of all men most sensitive to any shortcomings in the work of his collaborators. He writes to Forster: When I first saw it it was with a horror and agony not to be expressed. Of course I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, Warden has no business in the elopement scene. _He_ was never there. In the first hot sweat of this surprise and novelty I was going to implore the printing of that sheet to {38} be stopped, and the figure taken out of the block. But when I thought of the pain that this might give to our kind-hearted Leech, and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me, as never having entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I became more composed, though the fact is wonderful to me.