Poor
wretch! He never rode a match on the swiftest animal in his costly
stud, with half the speed at which he had torn along the course
that ended in the Fleet.
On the opposite side of the room an old man was seated on a
small wooden box, with his eyes riveted on the floor, and his face
settled into an expression of the deepest and most hopeless
despair. A young girl--his little grand-daughter--was hanging
about him, endeavouring, with a thousand childish devices, to
engage his attention; but the old man neither saw nor heard her.
The voice that had been music to him, and the eyes that had been
light, fell coldly on his senses. His limbs were shaking with
disease, and the palsy had fastened on his mind.
There were two or three other men in the room, congregated in
a little knot, and noiselessly talking among themselves. There was
a lean and haggard woman, too--a prisoner's wife--who was
watering, with great solicitude, the wretched stump of a dried-up,
withered plant, which, it was plain to see, could never send forth
a green leaf again--too true an emblem, perhaps, of the office
she had come there to discharge.
Such were the objects which presented themselves to Mr.
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