amping," and exercised upon all new-comers
who seem to have a spark of decency in them--had reduced the bones
of Paul, who fought tooth and nail in his defence, to the state of
magnesia, a man of a grave aspect, who had hitherto plucked his oakum
in quiet, suddenly rose, thrust himself between the victim and the
assailants, and desired the latter, like one having authority, to leave
the lad alone, and go and be d--d.

This proposal to resort to another place for amusement, though uttered
in a very grave and tranquil manner, produced that instantaneous
effect which admonitions from great rogues generally work upon little.
Messieurs the ravmpers ceased from their amusements; and the ringleader
of the gang, thumping Paul heartily on the back, declared he was a
capital fellow, and it was only a bit of a spree like, which he hoped
had not given any offence.

Paul, still clenching his fist, was about to answer in no pacific mood,
when a turnkey, who did not care in the least how many men he locked up
for an offence, but who did not at all like the trouble of looking after
any one of his flock to see that the offence was not committed, now
suddenly appeared among the set; and after scolding them for the
excessive plague they were to him, carried off two of the poorest of the
mob to solitary confinement. It happened, of course, that these two had
not taken the smallest share in the disturbance. This scene over, the
company returned to picking oakum; the tread-mill, that admirably just
invention by which a strong man suffers no fatigue and a weak one loses
his health for life, not having been then introduced into our excellent
establishments for correcting crime. Bitterly and with many dark and
wrathful feelings, in which the sense of injustice at punishment
alone bore him up against the humiliations to which he was
subjected,--bitterly and with a swelling heart, in which the thoughts
that lead to crime were already forcing their way through a soil
suddenly warmed for their growth, did Paul bend over his employment. He
felt himself touched on the arm; he turned, and saw that the gentleman
who had so kindly delivered him from his tormentors was now sitting next
to him. Paul gazed long and earnestly upon his neighbour, struggling
with the thought that he had beheld that sagacious countenance in
happier times, although now, alas! it was altered not only by time
and vicissitudes but by that air of gravity which the cares of manhood