lance with his
companion. "He is guilty, this young fellow." "Without doubt, he's
booked." They had their little code of signals for such occasions.

The day drew on, and the soft sweet air of evening began to rise. They
had stopped here and there for refreshments, but Richard had taken
nothing; he had, however, always accompanied his custodians within doors
at the various halting-places. He was afraid of the crowd that might
gather about the vehicle to look at the man that was being taken to
prison. There was nothing to mark him as such, but it seemed to him that
nobody could fail to know it. He welcomed the approach of night. They
still traveled on for hours, since there was no House of Detention at
which he could be placed in safety on the road; at last the wheels
rumbled over the uneven stones of a little country town; they stopped
before a building similar, so far as he could see by the moonlight, to
that to which he had been taken at Plymouth: all jails are alike,
especially to the eyes of the prisoner. A great bell was rung; there was
a parley with the keeper of the gate. The whole scene resembled
something which Richard remembered to have read in a book; he knew not
what, nor where. A door in the wall was opened; they led him up some
stone steps; the door closed behind him with a clang; and its locks
seemed to bite into the stone.

"This way, prisoner," said a gruff voice.

Door after door, passage after passage; a labyrinth of stone and iron.
At last he was ushered into a small chamber, unlike any thing he had
ever seen in his life. His sleeping-room at the keeper's lodge at
Crompton was palatial compared with it. The walls were stone; the floor
of a shining brown, so that it looked wet, though it was not so. His
jailer-chamberlain pointed to a low-lying hammock, stretched upon two
straps between the walls. "There, tumble in," he said; "you will have
your bath in the morning. Look alive!"

Richard obeyed him at once. "Good-night, warder," said he.

"Night!" grumbled the other; "it's morn-in'. A pretty time to be
knockin' up people at a respectable establishment. If you want any
thin'--broiled bones, or deviled kidneys"--for the man was a wag in his
quaint way--"ring this 'ere bell. As for the other rules and regulations
of her Majesty's jail, you'll learn them at breakfast-time."

The door slammed behind him.

How the doors _did_ slam in that place! And Richard was left alone. If,
instead of the metal e