Anyone may pull the doors open in such a street and enter, and the consequence is that occasionally a tenant has to pick his way up the stairs over the reclining forms of travellers who have taken up their quarters for the night without any preliminary negotiations with the landlord. These people are of the same class as those who make a dormitory of the Embankment, the seats on the bridges and in the public thoroughfares and Trafalgar Square, and in the mews and stable-yards, and under railway arches. In fine weather they may sleep in the streets, in bad weather they make themselves comfortable on the stairways of low-class tenant "blocks" and the houses with "the doors that are always open." They used to be called "'Appy Dossers"--a term the late Lord Salisbury with a smile asked me to explain when I used it in giving evidence before the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes. Sometimes these people have a room for a week or two, then they put in a week at the 'appy dosser business. That is why the tenants step over them with a certain amount of consideration. They themselves, though they have a room in the house this week for which they are paying rent, may be glad next week to sleep on the stairs for nothing. At the Old Bailey, when the Strattons were tried for the Mask murder, one of the women was asked where she slept when they were turned out of their lodgings. "On a staircase," was the reply. But there is a certain etiquette even among the 'appy dossers. It is not considered good manners to settle down for the night on somebody else's staircase until after one o'clock, and the usual hour for rising is between five and six. In the dead of night strange burthens are borne across the sleeping city. It is in the early morning that the night watchman, quitting his post in some great works or storeyard, generally makes the gruesome discovery which is to fill the Press for many days with the "mystery" that all classes of readers delight in. Skulking through the silent, deserted streets go men at war with society, men living by crime, who under the cover of darkness ply their perilous trade, ready armed to kill if need be, either the sleeping householder or the guardian of the night who interrupts them at their villainous work. Sometimes they have accomplished their task and are returning to their homes with the spoil upon them, but so cunningly concealed that they can pass the policeman strolling on his lonely beat without exciting his suspicion. For these men--the professional burglars who follow crime as a craft--plan and plot beforehand with the strategical skill of a general arranging an attack upon the enemy. After they have studied the "crib" they intend to "crack," and ascertained the habits of its inmates, they frequently walk the route they intend to follow once or twice beforehand in the night, noting everything by the way.