I thought it time to go, so I took a walk to the ‘dust-shoot.’ Year after year the ashes and refuse from the dust-bins of Hackney had been shot here--mountains of it. Here were boys and girls with sacks picking up bits of coal, cinders, or coke to take home, and young fellows collecting all the meat tins, salmon and lobster tins, etc. I watched the latter for a time, and saw they were placing the tins on coke fires, which were burning in several places. At one of these fires I saw the fellow with the upright hair, the man I was in search of, so I drew near and watched him awhile. He recognised me, but did not say anything. I soon saw why the tins were collected and put on the fire, for as soon as they became thoroughly red-hot he lifted them off, threw them away, and replaced them by others, a heap of which had been collected, his object being to melt the solder and tin, which ran quickly to the bottom of the fire, where a hole was made in the ground to receive it. ‘I suppose you get a tidy lot of metal in this way?’ I said to him. ‘Pretty well,’ he said. ‘The sardine-boxes are the best.’ ‘Let me look at some of your metal.’ He disappeared for a minute, and then brought me some rough-shaped pieces to look at. They were full of bits of cinder, etc., and not very saleable, even to marine-store dealers. I said, ‘You have got good metal, but it is very dirty. Have you got an old saucepan about here?’ He brought one, and I melted the metal over again, this time in the saucepan, and with the aid of a bit of wood skimmed off all the dross. ‘Now for some clay.’ He found some. We tempered it and flattened it as level as possible on the ground. A piece of cane about a foot long was found, a number of impressions of half the cane lengthways were made. Into these I poured his metal, and soon a number of sticks of solder, white, clear, and shining, were in his possession. ‘Now you have got something worth having,’ I said. ‘You can get a good price for it. Now I have shown you how to do this, won’t you give that little fellow his nine and sixpence back?’ ‘You must think I’m a mug. Why, I never had it.’ ‘Come,’ I said, ‘you must think me a mug if you ask me to believe that. You know you had it. Hand it over, and I will take it to him. One good turn deserves another.’ ‘What do you think!’ he said. I could get nothing from him, and I did not want to offend him, for I wanted to learn something from him. Presently I asked him how long he had lived in the ‘dust-shoot.’ He said five weeks, but I am inclined to believe he had been there much longer. After some persuasion he took me to his cave, which was on the other side of the ‘shoot.’ Here he had, in the side of the ‘shoot,’ excavated a short tunnel, at the end of which was his cave, not very commodious or comfortable; quite dark, except for his candle. Here he had his store of metal and anything else he picked up that was of any value. Here he had lived among all the festering rottenness for at least five weeks. On my asking him how many more lived in the ‘shoot,’ he said: ‘Only five or six.’ ‘Any women here?’ ‘No fear!’ I was told by another ‘Gubbin’ afterwards that at least twelve had caves, and that a woman came sometimes to one of them.