when she came into it--how about that?'

'It would be settled on herself, and they would have no more legal claim
on it than you,' would be the professional answer.

'Stop a bit,' said the turnkey. 'Supposing she was tender-hearted, and
they came over her. Where's your law for tying it up then?'

The deepest character whom the turnkey sounded, was unable to produce
his law for tying such a knot as that. So, the turnkey thought about it
all his life, and died intestate after all.

But that was long afterwards, when his god-daughter was past sixteen.
The first half of that space of her life was only just accomplished,
when her pitiful and plaintive look saw her father a widower. From that
time the protection that her wondering eyes had expressed towards him,
became embodied in action, and the Child of the Marshalsea took upon
herself a new relation towards the Father.

At first, such a baby could do little more than sit with him, deserting
her livelier place by the high fender, and quietly watching him. But
this made her so far necessary to him that he became accustomed to her,
and began to be sensible of missing her when she was not there. Through
this little gate, she passed out of childhood into the care-laden world.

What her pitiful look saw, at that early time, in her father, in her
sister, in her brother, in the jail; how much, or how little of the
wretched truth it pleased God to make visible to her; lies hidden with
many mysteries. It is enough that she was inspired to be something which
was not what the rest were, and to be that something, different and
laborious, for the sake of the rest. Inspired? Yes. Shall we speak of
the inspiration of a poet or a priest, and not of the heart impelled by
love and self-devotion to the lowliest work in the lowliest way of life!

With no earthly friend to help her, or so much as to see her, but the
one so strangely assorted; with no knowledge even of the common daily
tone and habits of the common members of the free community who are not
shut up in prisons; born and bred in a social condition, false even with
a reference to the falsest condition outside the walls; drinking from
infancy of a well whose waters had their own peculiar stain, their own
unwholesome and unnatural taste; the Child of the Marshalsea began her
womanly life.

No matter through what mistakes and discouragements, what ridicule (not
unkindly meant, but deeply felt) of her youth and little figure, wha