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preoccupied with all on the street about him. He glanced watchfully to the right and left as we moved on.
    “I meant Sir John’s.”
    “Oh, well, yes. Sir John. He lives back where we started from, above the court. I thought to give you some notion of the surroundings. Seen enough, have you?”
    We circled back to Bow Street, I marveling at the vast structures fixing the limits of the Garden, wondering what they housed. “Has he always lived here? Sir John, I mean.”
    I caught Mr. Bailey’s quick smile down at me. “Well, now,” he said, “that I can’t rightly say. Perhaps previous on the Strand for a time. Here in the city, before he married, he lived with his brother, who was the previous magistrate of the Bow Street Court until he took ill and died. It was they who put together the Runners.”
    “The Runners?”
    “Aye, the Bow Street Runners, constables, as fine a band of thief-takers as ever sent a ruffian to heel. We rule the streets of London, m’lad. Or rather, Sir John rules them through us. It’s our pride we’ve made them safe to walk after dark—most of them, anyway.”
    Mr. Bailey stopped beneath a street lamp and grinned down at me. “1 can see we wasn’t well met, we two. Allow me to introduce meself to you proper. Master… Master Proctor, is it?”
    I nodded, somewhat abashed.
    “Then I present meself to you. Master Proctor. I am Benjamin Bailey and am no less than captain of the Bow Street Runners, and I am at your service, sirT With that, he snapped a smart salute that bespoke his military background. I hen he ended his performance with a great, grand wink.
    I was much delighted—so much indeed, that I attempted to return his salute in my own unpracticed way. But there and then Mr. Bailey set about to correct it, raising my elbow, flattening my hand, until he was satisfied. “There,” said he, “we’ll make a Runner of ye yet.”
    Wishing to believe it might be so, my heart leapt. “How old must I be?”
    He perceived the eagerness in my eyes, for he immediately set about to put me to rights. “Oh, well, a bit older, I fear, and a bit bigger. But ye’ll be there quick enough. Take it from Benjamin Bailey.”
    My arm drooped down as did my spirits. But Mr. Bailey would have none of that. He clapped me firmly on the shoulder and set us walking again. “Ah, young Master Proctor, I was young as you meself once. And I well remember that like yourself I couldn’t wait to get on with things. Now I know I was wrong.”
    “Wrong? How so, Mr. Bailey?”
    “I could have waited.”
    We were well back on Bow Street. We walked along in silence for a short space until Mr. Bailey offered, “I hear tell he was in the Navy for a time.”
    My mind was elsewhere. “Who is that?”
    “Why, Sir John, m’lad. It was him we was speaking of, was it not?” He winked down at me, but then he continued in a more serious manner: “It was there he lost his sight. There are many stories told of it, but I know not the true one.”
    He led me back through Number 4 Bow Street. I noted upon our reentry a gathering of men down the hall, some as stout and imposing as Mr. Bailey himself. They spoke together in low tones with an air of preparation. Mr. Bailey led the way up two flights of back stairs. “Does Sir John’s wife await him?” I asked.
    “Lady Fielding is ill. You’ll not see much of her,” said Mr. Bailey rather strangely. “But there is Mrs. Gredge. You’ll see a good deal of her—more than you wish, I vow.”
    I knew not what to expect from this as we presented ourselves at the door at the head of the stairs. Mr. Bailey knocked stoutly upon it. A moment passed, and of a sudden there was a sound of screeching inside of such volume and duration that I wondered that there might be a pet corbie inside. But the noise grew louder and was at last heard in words and phrases of alarm from a spot just beyond the door: “Who is there? Who, I say? I’ll not open this door to a stranger! Make