ready to underbid him, but to knock him on the head for an
interloper. Even the thieves, to whom he gravitated, were
jealous of his accession, because there were too many competitors
already in their department. Through his career of penury, of
honest and dishonest callings, of 'scapes and captures,
imprisonments and other punishments, a year's reading of
Metropolitan Police Reports would furnish the exact counterpart.
--------

I don't know how many years after his flight from Pall Mall, one
dim midnight, I, returning from Richmond, lounged over Vauxhall
Bridge, listening to the low lapping of the current beneath the
arches--looking above to the stars and along the dark polished
surface that reflected a thousand lights in its
undulations,--feeling the awfulness of the dense, suppressed life
that was wrapt within the gloom and calm of the hour. I suddenly
saw a shadow, a human shadow, that at the sound of my footstep
quickly crossed my dreamy vision--quickly, noiselessly came and
went before my eyes until it stood up high and outlined against
the strangely-mingled haze. It looked like the ghost of a
slight-formed man, hatless and coatless, and for a moment I saw
at its upper extremity the dull flash as of a human face in the
gloom, before the shadow leaped out far into the night. Splash!
When my startled eyes looked down upon the glancing, waving
ebony, I thought I could trace a white coruscation of foam
spreading out into the darkness, instantly to dissipate and be
lost for ever. I did not then know what form it was that swilled
down below the glistening current. Had I known that it was
Ginx's Baby I should perhaps have thought "Society, which, in the
sacred names of Law and Charity, forbad the father to throw his