Then, standing out in the gloom, we saw Limehouse Church, where John Rokesmith prowled about on a ’tective scent; and where John Harmon waited for the third mate Radfoot, intending to murder him.  Next we reached Limehouse Hole, where Rogue Riderhood took the plunge down the steps of Leaving Shop.

Hawkins thought he saw the Artful Dodger ahead of us on the dock.  He went over and looked up and down and under an old upturned rowboat, then peered over the dock and swore a harmless oath that if we could catch him we would run him in without a warrant.  Yes, we’d clap the nippers on ’im and march ’im orf.

“Not if I can help it,” I said; “I like the fellow too well.”  Fortunately Hawkins failed to find him.

Here it was that the Uncommercial Traveler did patrol duty on many sleepless nights.  Here it was that Esther Summerson and Mr. Bucket came.  And by the light of a match held under my hat we read a handbill on the brick wall:  “Found Drowned!” The heading stood out in big, fat letters, but the print below was too damp to read, yet there is no doubt it is the same bill that Gaffer Hexam, Eugene Wrayburn and Mortimer Lightwood read, for Mr. Hawkins said so.

As we stood there we heard the gentle gurgle of the tide running under the pier, then a dip of oars coming from out the murky darkness of the muddy river:  a challenge from the shore with orders to row in, a hoarse, defiant answer and a watchman’s rattle.

A policeman passed us running and called back, “I say, Hawkins, is that you?  There’s murder broke loose in Whitechapel again!  The reserves have been ordered out!”

Hawkins stopped and seemed to pull himself together—­his height increased three inches.  A moment before I thought he was a candidate for fatty degeneration of the cerebrum, but now his sturdy frame was all atremble with life.

“Another murder!  I knew it.  Bill Sykes has killed Nancy at last.  There ’s fifty pun for the man who puts the irons on ’im—­I must make for the nearest stishun.”

He gave my hand a twist, shot down a narrow courtway—­and I was left to fight the fog, and mayhap this Bill Sykes and all the other wild phantoms of Dickens’ brain, alone.

* * * * *

A certain great general once said that the only good Indian is a dead Indian.  Just why the maxim should be limited to aborigines I know not, for when one reads obituaries he is discouraged at the thoughts of competing in virtue with those who have gone hence.

Let us extend the remark—­plagiarize a bit—­and say that the only perfect men are those whom we find in books.  The receipt for making them is simple, yet well worth pasting in your scrapbook.  Take the virtues of all the best men you ever knew or heard of, leave out the faults, then mix.

In the hands of “the lady novelist” this composition, well molded, makes a scarecrow, in the hair of which the birds of the air come and build their nests.  But manipulated by an expert a figure may appear that starts and moves and seems to feel the thrill of life.  It may even take its place on a pedestal and be exhibited with other waxworks and thus become confounded with the historic And though these things make the unskilful laugh, yet the judicious say, “Dickens made it, therefore let it pass for a man.”