with tiny bands of gold; for there had been a heavy shower during the day, that had purged the London air, and cleansed and sweetened the whole of London town. Tom looked out wistfully, and inhaled all he could, but it was not to be borne beyond a minute. The beautiful streets, full of happy people, were as a knife twisted round in his heart; he buried his face in his manacled hands, and could look no more.
By half-past four they were at Newgate.
Tom stepped through the sunlight into a forbidding vestibule—a very porch of despair—where a dimly burning lamp avowed eternal gloom. Here the newcomer was entered in a book, relieved of his handcuffs, and forthwith led through humid passages and nail-studded doors into the black heart of this horrible place.
In one corridor a large cell was being swabbed out as they passed. A horrid intuition chilled Tom’s blood.
“Whose cell is that?”
“Nobody’s now.”
“It was Greenacre’s! I had forgotten him; did he—die game?”
“Game? Not he; like a cur.”
Tom set his chattering teeth; but suddenly his eyes blinked: they were out again in the sun, in a yard some fifteen paces long, and half as broad as its length. A parallelogram of brilliant blue sky smiled cruelly overhead, cut on all sides by the high dark walls, and showing from the wet flags as the mouth of a well seen from its base.
“You’re consigned to Chapel Yard,” said Tom’s guide, “and this is it. I’m just looking for a wardsman, and then I’m done with ’ee. Ah, here he comes!”
A great, gross being, with an irregular walk and a face
