Previous - Next

'What's the matter now?' said the man carelessly.

'A young fogle-hunter,' replied the man who had Oliver in charge.

'Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?' inquired the man
with the keys.

'Yes, I am,' replied the old gentleman; 'but I am not sure that
this boy actually took the handkerchief. I--I would rather not
press the case.'

'Must go before the magistrate now, sir,' replied the man. 'His
worship will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young
gallows!'

This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which
he unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell. Here
he was searched; and nothing being found upon him, locked up.

This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar,
only not so light. It was most intolerably dirty; for it was
Monday morning; and it had been tenanted by six drunken people,
who had been locked up, elsewhere, since Saturday night. But
this is little. In our station-houses, men and women are every
night confined on the most trivial charges--the word is worth
noting--in dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate,
occupied by the most atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and
under sentence of death, are palaces. Let any one who doubts
this, compare the two.

The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key
grated in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had
been the innocent cause of all this disturbance.

'There is something in that boy's face,' said the old gentleman
to himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the
cover of the book, in a thoughtful manner; 'something that
touches and interests me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked
like--Bye the bye,' exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very
abruptly, and staring up into the sky, 'Bless my soul!--where
have I seen something like that look before?'

After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the
same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard;
and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's
eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had
hung for many years. 'No,' said the old gentleman, shaking his
head; 'it must be imagination.

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and
it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed
them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many
that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the
crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were
now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and
closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still
dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the
lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of
the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty
beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from
earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle
glow upon the path to Heaven.

Previous - Next