LODGED IN NEWGATE.

Police Constable Keggs, when he put his
hand upon my shoulder and informed me that
he had a warrant for my apprehension, caused
me to feel sick at heart. In face and voice he
seemed to be the most repulsive of all mortals.
I must go with him he said, to Bow Lane
station-house. I might go home for half-an-
hour and explain matters to my wife; but
the night I must spend "locked up." As we
went along he advised me—supposing I
might be deficient in tact or feeling—how I
could best break the news, so that the sudden
blow should fall as lightly as it might
upon her. I think when we got home that,
with an easy soothing way, he really did help
very effectively to comfort her.

At Bow Lane—the charge against me
having been entered, and the contents of
my pockets entrusted to the inspector on
duty for the night—I was locked up in a cell
containing only one other person—"highly
respectable" they told me. His snoring was
not interrupted by the clash and rattle of
doors, bolts, and keys, upon my entrance; and,
as he occupied the whole of the narrow
bench, which was the only available bed, I
took my boots off and walked up and down
throughout the night. A small gas lamp in
a niche at the top of the wall (lighting two
cells at once) enabled me to see that he was
a horny man who had done rough work in
the world. Towards morning he awoke and
saw me: "Halloa!" he cried; "what time
did you come in?" "Between eleven and
twelve." "Drunk and riotous, or incapable?"
"No," I replied. "Oh!" he said, "some heavy
business p'raps. Well, I'm in for forgery."

He got up and walked up and down, and
told me a wild story of his former life, to
which I gladly listened as a break on my own
painful meditations. At eleven o'clock the
officer came for me, and conveyed me in a
cab (paid for with the money that had been
found in my pockets) to the Mansion-house.
Through the dark passage under the Police
Court I was ushered into an apartment like
a vault, lighted with gas, though there was
the bright noon of summer flooding all the
streets outside. The vault was crowded with
policemen in uniform, among whom there
were also some officers in plain clothes,
and two or three minor officials of the court
above. The warder of the place—a thoroughly
kind-hearted man, dangling a huge bunch of
bright keys upon his finger—led me down a
passage to the left into a corridor, along the
walls of which were iron cages, like the dens
which confiine beasts of prey at the Zoological
Gardens. Into one of these he locked me.
Other prisoners were brought afterwards
into the cages, so that we soon came to be
rather closely packed. A huge gas burner
glared upon us, and the place was very close;
but there was nothing in the air half so
unwholesome as the wandering utterances,

"The voices and the shadows,
And images of voice,"

which filled my ears with the knowledge that
I was among people morally degraded. Old
offenders winked their recognitions to each
other; men—self-occupied, as is the way with
all the ignorant—talked of themselves to
their neighbours; discussed crime as a calling,
and their chances of escape, or the character
of their several convictions, as a set of farmers
might discuss their prospects for the harvest,
only with less decorum and more mirth—a
very ugly mirth. Levity was the prevailing
habit. A quiet-looking boy asked in a meek
voice, as the warder passed him, "Oh, if you
please, sir, might I have a little drop of
water?" Everybody was at once struck
with intense thirst, and the joke was relished
all the more as there was only one tin can to
supply the whole. It was handed round, and
every one praised the ale, declared it was in
prime condition; some adding that they
would "tick it up this time," but that the
next time they happened to be passing they
would be sure to call in and rub off the score.

My solicitor having come down we held a
conference. He told me that, although—as it
was in due time shown—I had been accused
of a grave crime hastily and in error, he should
apply for a remand; for he would be unable to
meet the charges against me effectually at once.
I expected immediate liberation on bail; and,
as I dreaded no stain upon my character,
considered that my trouble was already over.
After the magistrate had taken his seat, and
the forms proper on opening the court had
been completed, the various officers came
down, ready each at the fit time to uncage his