Let me not linger too much over those sad times. Morning came on as

usual; for it is strange, but true, that to the very wretched it seems

wonderful that times and seasons should keep their appointed courses

in the midst of such mighty overthrows, and such interruption to the

courses of their own wonted happiness and their habitual expectations.

Why should morning and night, why should all movements in the natural

world be so regular, whilst in the moral world all is so irregular

and anomalous? Yet the sun and the moon rise and set as usual upon the

mightiest revolutions of empire and of worldly fortune that this planet

ever beholds; and it is sometimes even a comfort to know that this will

be the case. A great criminal, sentenced to an agonizing punishment,

has derived a fortitude and a consolation from recollecting that the

day would run its inevitable course--that a day after all was _but_

a day--that the mighty wheel of alternate light and darkness must and

would revolve--and that the evening star would rise as usual, and shine

with its untroubled lustre upon the dust and ashes of what _had_ indeed

suffered, and so recently, the most bitter pangs, but would then have

ceased to suffer. 'La Journée,' said Damien,

'La journée sera dure, mais elle se passera.'

'----_Se passera_:' yes, that is true, I whispered to myself; my day

also, my season of trial will be hard to bear; but that also will have

an end; that also '_se passera_.' Thus I talked or thought so long as I

thought at all; for the hour was now rapidly approaching, when thinking

in any shape would for some time be at an end for me.

That day, as the morning advanced, I went again, accompanied by Hannah,

to the police court and to the prison--a vast, ancient, in parts

ruinous, and most gloomy pile of building. In those days the

administration of justice was, if not more corrupt, certainly in its

inferior departments by far more careless than it is at present, and

liable to thousands of interruptions and mal-practices, supporting

themselves upon old traditionary usages which required at least half

a century, and the shattering everywhere given to old systems by the

French Revolution, together with the universal energy of mind applied

to those subjects over the whole length and breadth of Christendom, to

approach with any effectual reforms. Knowing this, and having myself had

direct personal cognisance of various cases in which bribery had been

applied with success, I was not without considerable hope that perhaps

Hannah and myself might avail ourselves of this irregular passport

through the gates of the prison. And, had the new regulation been of

somewhat longer standing, there is little doubt that I should have been

found right; unfortunately, as yet it had all the freshness of newborn

vigor, and kept itself in remembrance by the singular irritation it

excited. Besides this, it was a pet novelty of one particular minister,

new to the possession of power, anxious to distinguish himself, proud

of his creative functions within the range of his office, and very

sensitively jealous on the point of opposition to his mandates. Vain,

therefore, on this day were all my efforts to corrupt the jailers; and,

in fact, anticipating a time when I might have occasion to corrupt some

of them for a more important purpose and on a larger scale, I did not

think it prudent to proclaim my character beforehand as one who tampered

with such means, and thus to arm against myself those jealousies in

official people, which it was so peculiarly important that I should keep

asleep.

All that day, however, I lingered about the avenues and vast courts

in the precincts of the prison, and near one particular wing of the

building, which had been pointed out to me by a jailer as the section

allotted to those who were in the situation of Agnes; that is, waiting

their final commitment for trial. The building generally he could

indicate with certainty, but he professed himself unable to indicate

the particular part of it which 'the young woman brought in on the day

previous' would be likely to occupy; consequently he could not point

out the window from which her cell (her '_cell_!' what a word!) would be

lighted. 'But, master,' he went on to say, 'I would advise nobody to try

that game.' He looked with an air so significant, and at the same time

used a gesture so indicative of private understanding, that I at

once apprehended his meaning, and assured him that he had altogether

misconstrued my drift; that, as to attempts at escape, or at any mode of

communicating with the prisoner from the outside, I trusted all _that_

was perfectly needless; and that at any rate in my eyes it was perfectly

hopeless. 'Well, master,' he replied, 'that's neither here nor there.

You've come down handsomely, that I _will_ say; and where a gentleman

acts like a gentleman, and behaves himself as such, I'm not the man to

go and split upon him for a word. To be sure it's quite nat'ral that a

gentleman--put case that a young woman is his fancy woman--it's nothing

but nat'ral that he should want to get her out of such an old rat-hole

as this, where many's the fine-timbered creature, both he and she, that

has lain to rot, and has never got out of the old trap at all, first

or last'----'How so?' I interrupted him; 'surely they don't detain the

corpses of prisoners?' 'Ay, but mind you--put case that he or that she

should die in this rat-trap before sentence is past, why then the prison

counts them as its own children, and buries them in its own chapel--that

old stack of pigeon-holes that you see up yonder to the right hand.' So

then, after all, thought I, if my poor Agnes should, in her desolation

and solitary confinement to these wretched walls, find her frail

strength give way--should the moral horrors of her situation work their

natural effect upon her health, and she should chance to die within this

dungeon, here within this same dungeon will she lie to the resurrection,

and in that case her prison-doors have already closed upon her for

ever. The man, who perhaps had some rough kindness in his nature,

though tainted by the mercenary feelings too inevitably belonging to

his situation, seemed to guess at the character of my ruminations by the

change of my countenance, for he expressed some pity for my being 'in

so much trouble;' and it seemed to increase his respect for me that this

trouble should be directed to the case of a woman, for he appeared

to have a manly sense of the peculiar appeal made to the honor and

gallantry of man, by the mere general fact of the feebleness and the

dependence of woman. I looked at him more attentively in consequence of

the feeling tone in which he now spoke, and was surprised that I had not

more particularly noticed him before; he was a fine looking, youngish

man, with a bold Robin-hood style of figure and appearance; and, morally

speaking, he was absolutely transfigured to my eyes by the effect worked

upon him for the moment, through the simple calling up of his better

nature. However, he recurred to his cautions about the peril in a legal

sense of tampering with the windows, bolts, and bars of the old decaying

prison; which, in fact, precisely according to the degree in which its

absolute power over its prisoners was annually growing less and less,

grew more and more jealous of its own reputation, and punished the

attempts to break loose with the more severity, in exact proportion as

they were the more tempting by the chances of success. I persisted in

disowning any schemes of the sort, and especially upon the ground of

their hopelessness. But this, on the other hand, was a ground that in

his inner thoughts he treated with scorn; and I could easily see that,

with a little skilful management of opportunity, I might, upon occasion,

draw from him all the secrets he knew as to the special points of

infirmity in this old ruinous building. For the present, and until it

should certainly appear that there was some use to be derived from

this species of knowledge, I forbore to raise superfluous suspicions

by availing myself further of his communicative disposition. Taking,

however, the precaution of securing his name, together with his

particular office and designation in the prison, I parted from him as

if to go home, but in fact to resume my sad roamings up and down the

precincts of the jail.

What made these precincts much larger than otherwise they would have

been, was the circumstance that, by a usage derived from older days,

both criminal prisoners and those who were prisoners for debt, equally

fell under the custody of this huge caravanserai for the indifferent

reception of crime, of misdemeanor, and of misfortune. And those who

came under the two first titles, were lodged here through all stages of

their connection with public justice; alike when mere objects of vague

suspicion to the police, when under examination upon a specific charge,

when fully committed for trial, when convicted and under sentence,

awaiting the execution of that sentence, and, in a large proportion of

cases, even through their final stage of punishment, when it happened

to be of any nature compatible with in-door confinement. Hence it arose

that the number of those who haunted the prison gates, with or without

a title to admission, was enormous; all the relatives, or more properly

the acquaintances and connections of the criminal population within

the prison, being swelled by all the families of needy debtors who came

daily, either to offer the consolation of their society, or to diminish

their common expenditure by uniting their slender establishments. One

of the rules applied to the management of this vast multitude that were

every day candidates for admission was, that to save the endless trouble

as well as risk, perhaps, of opening and shutting the main gates

to every successive arrival, periodic intervals were fixed for the

admission by wholesale; and as these periods came round every two hours,

it would happen at many parts of the day that vast crowds accumulated

waiting for the next opening of the gate. These crowds were assembled

in two or three large outer courts, in which also were many stalls and

booths, kept there upon some local privilege of ancient inheritance,

or upon some other plea made good by gifts or bribes--some by Jews

and others by Christians, perhaps equally Jewish. Superadded to these

stationary elements of this miscellaneous population, were others drawn

thither by pure motives of curiosity, so that altogether an almost

permanent mob was gathered together in these courts; and amid this mob

it was,--from I know not what definite motive, partly because I thought

it probable that amongst these people I should hear the cause of Agnes

peculiarly the subject of conversation; and so, in fact, it did really

happen,--but partly, and even more, I believe, because I now awfully

began to shrink from solitude. Tumult I must have, and distraction of

thought. Amid this mob, I say, it was that I passed two days. Feverish I

had been from the first--and from bad to worse, in such a case, was, at

any rate, a natural progress; but, perhaps, also amongst this crowd of

the poor, the abjectly wretched, the ill-fed, the desponding, and the

dissolute, there might be very naturally a larger body of contagion

lurking than according to their mere numerical expectations. There was

at that season a very extensive depopulation going on in some quarters

of this great metropolis, and in other cities of the same empire, by

means of a very malignant typhus. This fever is supposed to be the

peculiar product of jails; and though it had not as yet been felt as

a scourge and devastator of this particular jail, or at least the

consequent mortality had been hitherto kept down to a moderate amount,

yet it was highly probable that a certain quantity of contagion, much

beyond the proportion of other popular assemblages less uniformly

wretched in their composition, was here to be found all day long; and

doubtless my excited state, and irritable habit of body, had offered

a peculiar predisposition that favored the rapid development of this

contagion. However this might be, the result was, that on the evening

of the second day which I spent in haunting the purlieus of the prison,

(consequently the night preceding the second public examination of

Agnes,) I was attacked by ardent fever in such unmitigated fury, that

before morning I had lost all command of my intellectual faculties. For

some weeks I became a pitiable maniac, and in every sense the wreck of

my former self; and seven entire weeks, together with the better half of

an eighth week, had passed over my head whilst I lay unconscious of time

and its dreadful freight of events, excepting in so far as my disordered

brain, by its fantastic coinages, created endless mimicries and

mockeries of these events--less substantial, but oftentimes less

afflicting, or less agitating. It would have been well for me had my

destiny decided that I was not to be recalled to this world of wo. But

I had no such happiness in store. I recovered, and through twenty and

eight years my groans have recorded the sorrow I feel that I did.

* * * * *

I shall not rehearse circumstantially, and point by point, the sad

unfolding, as it proceeded through successive revelations to me, of all

which had happened during my state of physical incapacity. When I first

became aware that my wandering senses had returned to me, and knew, by

the cessation of all throbbings, and the unutterable pains that had

so long possessed my brain, that I was now returning from the gates of

death, a sad confusion assailed me as to some indefinite cloud of evil

that had been hovering over me at the time when I first fell into a

state of insensibility. For a time I struggled vainly to recover the

lost connection of my thoughts, and I endeavored ineffectually to

address myself to sleep. I opened my eyes, but found the glare of light

painful beyond measure. Strength, however, it seemed to me that I had,

and more than enough, to raise myself out of bed. I made the attempt,

but fell back, almost giddy with the effort. At the sound of the

disturbance which I had thus made, a woman whom I did not know came from

behind a curtain, and spoke to me. Shrinking from any communication

with a stranger, especially one whose discretion I could not estimate in

making discoveries to me with the requisite caution, I asked her simply

what o'clock it was.

'Eleven in the forenoon,' she replied.

'And what day of the month?'

'The second,' was her brief answer.

I felt almost a sense of shame in adding--; 'The second! but of what

month?'

'Of June,' was the startling rejoinder.

On the 8th of April I had fallen ill, and it was now actually the 2d

of June. Oh! sickening calculation! revolting register of hours! for in

that same moment which brought back this one recollection, perhaps by

steadying my brain, rushed back in a torrent all the other dreadful

remembrances of the period, and now the more so, because, though the

event was still uncertain as regarded my knowledge, it must have become

dreadfully certain as regarded the facts of the case, and the happiness

of all who were concerned. Alas! one little circumstance too painfully

assured me that this event had not been a happy one. Had Agnes been

restored to her liberty and her home, where would she have been

found but watching at my bed-side? That too certainly I knew, and the

inference was too bitter to support.

On this same day, some hours afterwards, upon Hannah's return from the

city, I received from her, and heard with perfect calmness, the whole

sum of evil which awaited me. Little Francis--she took up her tale at

that point--'was with God:' so she expressed herself. He had died of the

same fever which had attacked me--had died and been buried nearly

five weeks before. Too probably he had caught the infection from me.

Almost--such are the caprices of human feeling--almost I could have

rejoiced that this young memorial of my vanished happiness had vanished

also. It gave me a pang, nevertheless, that the grave should thus have

closed upon him before I had seen his fair little face again. But I

steeled my heart to hear worse things than this. Next she went on to

inform me that already, on the first or second day of our calamity, she

had taken upon herself, without waiting for authority, on observing the

rapid approaches of illness in me, and arguing the state of helplessness

which would follow, to write off at once a summons in the most urgent

terms to the brother of my wife. This gentleman, whom I shall call

Pierpoint, was a high-spirited, generous young man as I have ever known.

When I say that he was a sportsman, that at one season of the year he

did little else than pursue his darling amusement of fox-hunting, for

which indeed he had almost a maniacal passion--saying this, I shall

already have prejudged him in the opinions of many, who fancy all such

persons the slaves of corporeal enjoyments. But, with submission, the

truth lies the other way. According to my experience, people of these

habits have their bodies more than usually under their command, as being

subdued by severe exercise; and their minds, neither better nor worse on

an average than those of their neighbors, are more available from being

so much more rarely clogged by morbid habits in that uneasy yoke-fellow

of the intellectual part--the body. He at all events was a man to

justify in his own person this way of thinking; for he was a man not

only of sound, but even of bold and energetic intellect, and in all

moral respects one whom any man might feel proud to call his friend.

This young man, Pierpoint, without delay obeyed the summons; and on

being made acquainted with what had already passed, the first step he

took was to call upon Barratt, and without further question than what

might ascertain his identity, he proceeded to inflict upon him a severe

horsewhipping. A worse step on his sister's account he could not have

taken. Previously to this the popular feeling had run strongly against

Barratt, but now its unity was broken. A new element was introduced

into the question: Democratic feelings were armed against this outrage;

gentlemen and nobles, it was said, thought themselves not amenable

to justice; and again, the majesty of the law was offended at this

intrusion upon an affair already under solemn course of adjudication.

Everything, however, passes away under the healing hand of time, and

this also faded from the public mind. People remembered also that he

was a brother, and in that character, at any rate, had a right to some

allowances for his intemperance; and what quickened the oblivion of the

affair was, which in itself was sufficiently strange, that Barratt did

not revive the case in the public mind by seeking legal reparation for

his injuries. It was, however, still matter of regret that Pierpoint

should have indulged himself in this movement of passion, since

undoubtedly it broke and disturbed the else uniform stream of public

indignation, by investing the original aggressor with something like the

character of an injured person; and therefore with some set-off to plead

against his own wantonness of malice;--his malice might now assume the

nobler aspect of revenge.

Thus far, in reporting the circumstances, Hannah had dallied--thus far

I had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now

there remained nothing to dally with any longer--and she rushed along in

her narrative, hurrying to tell--I hurrying to hear. A second, a third

examination had ensued, then a final committal--all this within a week.

By that time all the world was agitated with the case; literally not

the city only, vast as that city was, but the nation was convulsed and

divided into parties upon the question, Whether the prosecution were one

of mere malice or not? The very government of the land was reported to

be equally interested, and almost equally divided in opinion. In this

state of public feeling came the trial. Image to yourself, oh reader,

whosoever you are, the intensity of the excitement which by that time

had arisen in all people to be spectators of the scene--then image to

yourself the effect of all this, a perfect consciousness that in

herself as a centre was settled the whole mighty interest of

the exhibition--that interest again of so dubious and mixed a

character--sympathy in some with mere misfortune--sympathy in others

with female frailty and guilt, not perhaps founded upon an absolute

unwavering belief in her innocence, even amongst those who were most

loud and positive as partisans in affirming it,--and then remember that

all this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose

very nature, constitutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of

womanly shame--of matronly dignity--of insulted innocence, from every

mode and shape of public display. Combine all these circumstances and

elements of the case, and you may faintly enter into the situation of my

poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring

to the case of a young female Christian martyr, in the early ages of

Christianity, exposed in the bloody amphitheatre of Rome or Verona, to

'fight with wild beasts,' as it was expressed in mockery--she to fight

the lamb to fight with lions! But in reality the young martyr _had_

a fight to maintain, and a fight (in contempt of that cruel mockery)

fiercer than the fiercest of her persecutors could have faced

perhaps--the combat with the instincts of her own shrinking, trembling,

fainting nature. Such a fight had my Agnes to maintain; and at that time

there was a large party of gentlemen in whom the gentlemanly instinct

was predominant, and who felt so powerfully the cruel indignities of her

situation, that they made a public appeal in her behalf. One thing, and

a strong one, which they said, was this:--'We all talk and move in this

case as if, because the question appears doubtful to some people, and

the accused party to some people wears a doubtful character, it would

follow that she therefore had in reality a mixed character composed in

joint proportions of the best and the worst that is imputed to her. But

let us not forget that this mixed character belongs not to her, but

to the infirmity of our human judgments--_they_ are mixed--_they_ are

dubious--but she is not--she is, or she is not, guilty--there is no

middle case--and let us consider for a single moment, that if this young

lady (as many among us heartily believe) _is_ innocent, then and upon

that supposition let us consider how cruel we should all think the

public exposure which aggravates the other injuries (as in that case

they must be thought) to which her situation exposes her.' They went on

to make some suggestions for the officers of the court in preparing

the arrangements for the trial, and some also for the guidance of

the audience, which showed the same generous anxiety for sparing the

feelings of the prisoner. If these did not wholly succeed in repressing

the open avowal of coarse and brutal curiosity amongst the intensely

vulgar, at least they availed to diffuse amongst the neutral and

indifferent part of the public a sentiment of respect and forbearance

which, emanating from high quarters, had a very extensive influence upon

most of what met the eye or the ear of my poor wife. She, on the day of

trial, was supported by her brother; and by that time she needed support

indeed. I was reported to be dying; her little son was dead; neither had

she been allowed to see him. Perhaps these things, by weaning her from

all further care about life, might have found their natural effect in

making her indifferent to the course of the trial, or even to its issue.

And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering

sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies,

'the hectic of a moment,' came back upon her, and prevailed over the

deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry

light--sweet and woful to remember. Then----but why linger? I hurry to

the close: she was pronounced guilty; whether by a jury or a bench of

judges, I do not say--having determined, from the beginning, to give no

hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of

the slightest consequence. Guilty she was pronounced: but sentence at

that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the muff

or other circumstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These

circumstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants

only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: _that_

naturally diminished their value. And, on the other side, evidence was

arrayed, perjury was suborned, that would have wrecked a wilderness of

simple truth trusting to its own unaided forces. What followed? Did this

judgment of the court settle the opinion of the public? Opinion of

the public! Did it settle the winds? Did it settle the motion of the

Atlantic? Wilder, fiercer, and louder grew the cry against the wretched

accuser: mighty had been the power over the vast audience of the

dignity, the affliction, the perfect simplicity, and the Madonna beauty

of the prisoner. That beauty so childlike, and at the same time so

saintly, made, besides, so touching in its pathos by means of the

abandonment--the careless abandonment and the infinite desolation of her

air and manner--would of itself, and without further aid, have made many

converts. Much more was done by the simplicity of her statements, and

the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points

in her own favor--the indifference, as every heart perceived, of

despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side--the haggard

consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut

which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses,

assembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of

conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm

of popular opinion made itself heard with a louder and a louder sound.

The government itself began to be disturbed; the ministers of the

sovereign were agitated; and, had no menaces been thrown out, it was

generally understood that they would have given way to the popular

voice, now continually more distinct and clamorous. In the midst of all

this tumult, obscure murmurs began to arise that Barratt had practised

the same or similar villanies in former instances. One case in

particular was beginning to be whispered about, which at once threw

a light upon the whole affair: it was the case of a young and very

beautiful married woman, who had been on the very brink of a catastrophe

such as had befallen my own wife, when some seasonable interference, of

what nature was not known, had critically delivered her. This case

arose 'like a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand,' then spread and

threatened to burst in tempest upon the public mind, when all at once,

more suddenly even than it had arisen, it was hushed up, or in some way

disappeared. But a trifling circumstance made it possible to trace

this case:--in after times, when means offered, but unfortunately no

particular purpose of good, nor any purpose, in fact, beyond that of

curiosity, it _was_ traced; and enough was soon ascertained to have

blown to fragments any possible conspiracy emanating from this Barratt,

had that been of any further importance. However, in spite of all that

money or art could effect, a sullen growl continued to be heard amongst

the populace of villanies many and profound that had been effected or

attempted by this Barratt; and accordingly, much in the same way as

was many years afterwards practised in London, when a hosier had caused

several young people to be prosecuted to death for passing forged

bank-notes, the wrath of the people showed itself in marking the shop

for vengeance upon any favorable occasion offering through fire or

riots, and in the mean time in deserting it. These things had been going

on for some time when I awoke from my long delirium; but the effect they

had produced upon a weak and obstinate and haughty government, or at

least upon the weak and obstinate and haughty member of the government

who presided in the police administration, was, to confirm and rivet the

line of conduct which had been made the object of popular denunciation.

More energetically, more scornfully, to express that determination of

flying in the face of public opinion and censure, four days before my

awakening, Agnes had been brought up to receive her sentence. On

that same day (nay, it was said in that same hour,) petitions, very

numerously signed, and various petitions from different ranks, different

ages, different sexes, were carried up to the throne, praying, upon

manifold grounds, but all noticing the extreme doubtfulness of the

case, for an unconditional pardon. By whose advice or influence, it was

guessed easily, though never exactly ascertained, these petitions were

unanimously, almost contemptuously rejected. And to express the contempt

of public opinion as powerfully as possible, Agnes was sentenced by the

court, reassembled in full pomp, order, and ceremonial costume, to a

punishment the severest that the laws allowed--viz. hard labor for ten

years. The people raged more than ever; threats public and private

were conveyed to the ears of the minister chiefly concerned in the

responsibility, and who had indeed, by empty and ostentatious talking,

assumed that responsibility to himself in a way that was perfectly

needless.

Thus stood matters when I awoke to consciousness: and this was the

fatal journal of the interval--interval so long as measured by my fierce

calendar of delirium--so brief measured by the huge circuit of

events which it embraced, and their mightiness for evil. Wrath, wrath

immeasurable, unimaginable, unmitigable, burned at my heart like

a cancer. The worst had come. And the thing which kills a man for

action--the living in two climates at once--a torrid and a frigid

zone--of hope and fear--that was past. Weak--suppose I were for the

moment: I felt that a day or two might bring back my strength. No

miserable tremors of hope _now_ shook my nerves: if they shook from that

inevitable rocking of the waters that follows a storm, so much might

be pardoned to the infirmity of a nature that could not lay aside its

fleshly necessities, nor altogether forego its homage to 'these frail

elements,' but which by inspiration already lived within a region

where no voices were heard but the spiritual voices of transcendent

passions--of

'Wrongs unrevenged, and insults unredress'd.'

Six days from that time I was well--well and strong. I rose from bed; I

bathed; I dressed; dressed as if I were a bridegroom. And that _was_ in

fact a great day in my life. I was to see Agnes. Oh! yes: permission had

been obtained from the lordly minister that I should see my wife. Is it

possible? Can such condescensions exist? Yes: solicitations from

ladies, eloquent notes wet with ducal tears, these had won from the

thrice-radiant secretary, redolent of roseate attar, a countersign to

some order or other, by which I--yes I--under license of a fop, and

supervision of a jailer--was to see and for a time to converse with my

own wife.

The hour appointed for the first day's interview was eight o'clock

in the evening. On the outside of the jail all was summer light and

animation. The sports of children in the streets of mighty cities are

but sad, and too painfully recall the circumstances of freedom and

breezy nature that are not there. But still the pomp of glorious summer,

and the presence, 'not to be put by,' of the everlasting light, that

is either always present, or always dawning--these potent elements

impregnate the very city life, and the dim reflex of nature which is

found at the bottom of well-like streets, with more solemn powers to

move and to soothe in summer. I struck upon the prison gates, the first

among multitudes waiting to strike. Not because we struck, but because

the hour had sounded, suddenly the gate opened; and in we streamed. I,

as a visitor for the first time, was immediately distinguished by the

jailers, whose glance of the eye is fatally unerring. 'Who was it that I

wanted?' At the name a stir of emotion was manifest, even there: the dry

bones stirred and moved: the passions outside had long ago passed to the

interior of this gloomy prison: and not a man but had his hypothesis on

the case; not a man but had almost fought with some comrade (many had

literally fought) about the merits of their several opinions.

If any man had expected a scene at this reunion, he would have been

disappointed. Exhaustion, and the ravages of sorrow, had left to dear

Agnes so little power of animation or of action, that her emotions were

rather to be guessed at, both for kind and for degree, than directly

to have been perceived. She was in fact a sick patient, far gone in an

illness that should properly have confined her to bed; and was as much

past the power of replying to my frenzied exclamations, as a dying

victim of fever of entering upon a strife of argument. In bed, however,

she was not. When the door opened she was discovered sitting at a table

placed against the opposite wall, her head pillowed upon her arms, and

these resting upon the table. Her beautiful long auburn hair had escaped

from its confinement, and was floating over the table and her own

person. She took no notice of the disturbance made by our entrance, did

not turn, did not raise her head, nor make an effort to do so, nor by

any sign whatever intimate that she was conscious of our presence, until

the turnkey in a respectful tone announced me. Upon that a low groan, or

rather a feeble moan, showed that she had become aware of my presence,

and relieved me from all apprehension of causing too sudden a shock by

taking her in my arms. The turnkey had now retired; we were alone. I

knelt by her side, threw my arms about her, and pressed her to my heart.

She drooped her head upon my shoulder, and lay for some time like one

who slumbered; but, alas! not as she had used to slumber. Her breathing,

which had been like that of sinless infancy, was now frightfully short

and quick; she seemed not properly to breathe, but to gasp. This,

thought I, may be sudden agitation, and in that case she will gradually

recover; half an hour will restore her. Wo is me! she did _not_ recover;

and internally I said--she never _will_ recover. The arrows have gone

too deep for a frame so exquisite in its sensibility, and already her

hours are numbered.

At this first visit I said nothing to her about the past; _that_, and

the whole extent to which our communications should go, I left rather

to her own choice. At the second visit, however, upon some word or other

arising which furnished an occasion for touching on this hateful topic,

I pressed her, contrary to my own previous intention, for as full an

account of the fatal event as she could without a distressing effort

communicate. To my surprise she was silent--gloomily--almost it might

have seemed obstinately silent. A horrid thought came into my mind;

could it, might it have been possible that my noble-minded wife, such

she had ever seemed to me, was open to temptations of this nature? Could

it have been that in some moment of infirmity, when her better angel was

away from her side, she had yielded to a sudden impulse of frailty,

such as a second moment for consideration would have resisted, but which

unhappily had been followed by no such opportunity of retrieval? I

had heard of such things. Cases there were in our own times (and not

confined to one nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known

to have haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ignoble and base.

I ran over some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this

propensity. More than one were the names of people in a technical sense

held noble. That, nor any other consideration abated my horror. Better,

I said, better, (because more compatible with elevation of mind,) better

to have committed some bloody act--some murderous act. Dreadful was the

panic I underwent. God pardon the wrong I did; and even now I pray

to him--as though the past thing were a future thing and capable

of change--that he would forbid her for ever to know what was the

derogatory thought I had admitted. I sometimes think, by recollecting a

momentary blush that suffused her marble countenance,--I think--I fear

that she might have read what was fighting in my mind. Yet that would

admit of another explanation. If she did read the very worst, meek

saint! she suffered no complaint or sense of that injury to escape her.

It might, however, be that perception, or it might be that fear which

roused her to an effort that otherwise had seemed too revolting to

undertake. She now rehearsed the whole steps of the affair from first to

last; but the only material addition, which her narrative made to that

which the trial itself had involved, was the following:--On two separate

occasions previous to the last and fatal one, when she had happened to

walk unaccompanied by me in the city, the monster Barratt had met her

in the street. He had probably--and this was, indeed, subsequently

ascertained--at first, and for some time afterwards, mistaken her rank,

and had addressed some proposals to her, which, from the suppressed

tone of his speaking, or from her own terror and surprise, she had not

clearly understood; but enough had reached her alarmed ear to satisfy

her that they were of a nature in the last degree licentious and

insulting. Terrified and shocked rather than indignant, for she too

easily presumed the man to be a maniac, she hurried homewards; and was

rejoiced, on first venturing to look round when close to her own gate,

to perceive that the man was not following. There, however, she was

mistaken; for either on this occasion, or on some other, he had traced

her homewards. The last of these rencontres had occurred just three

months before the fatal 6th of April; and if, in any one instance, Agnes

had departed from the strict line of her duty as a wife, or had shown

a defect of judgment, it was at this point--in not having frankly and

fully reported the circumstances to me. On the last of these occasions

I had met her at the garden-gate, and had particularly remarked that she

seemed agitated; and now, at recalling these incidents, Agnes reminded

me that I had noticed that circumstance to herself, and that she had

answered me faithfully as to the main fact. It was true she had done so;

for she had said that she had just met a lunatic who had alarmed her

by fixing his attention upon herself, and speaking to her in a ruffian

manner; and it was also true that she did sincerely regard him in that

light. This led me at the time to construe the whole affair into a

casual collision with some poor maniac escaping from his keepers, and of

no future moment, having passed by without present consequences. But had

she, instead of thus reporting her own erroneous impression, reported

the entire circumstances of the case, I should have given them a

very different interpretation. Affection for me, and fear to throw me

needlessly into a quarrel with a man of apparently brutal and violent

nature--these considerations, as too often they do with the most upright

wives, had operated to check Agnes in the perfect sincerity of her

communications. She had told nothing _but_ the truth--only, and fatally

it turned out for us both, she had not told the _whole_ truth. The very

suppression, to which she had reconciled herself, under the belief that

thus she was providing for my safety and her own consequent happiness,

had been the indirect occasion of ruin to both. It was impossible to

show displeasure under such circumstances, or under any circumstances,

to one whose self-reproaches were at any rate too bitter; but certainly,

as a general rule, every conscientious woman should resolve to consider

her husband's honor in the first case, and far before all other regards

whatsoever; to make this the first, the second, the third law of her

conduct, and his personal safety but the fourth or fifth. Yet women,

and especially when the interests of children are at stake upon their

husbands' safety, rarely indeed are able to take this Roman view of

their duties.

To return to the narrative. Agnes had not, nor could have, the most

remote suspicion of this Barratt's connection with the shop which he had

not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch it

was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and

degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her

natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the depth

of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And not only

had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design in what before

had seemed accident, and links uniting remote incidents which else

seemed casual and disconnected, greatly disturbed and confused her

manner, which confusion again had become more intense upon her own

consciousness that she _was_ confused, and that her manner was greatly

to her disadvantage; but--which was the worst effect of all, because the

rest could not operate against her, except upon those who were present

to witness it, whereas this was noted down and recorded--so utterly

did her confusion strip her of all presence of mind, that she did not

consciously notice (and consequently could not protest against at

the moment when it was most important to do so, and most natural) the

important circumstance of the muff. This capital objection, therefore,

though dwelt upon and improved to the utmost at the trial, was looked

upon by the judges as an after-thought; and merely because it had not

been seized upon by herself, and urged in the first moments of her

almost incapacitating terror on finding this amongst the circumstances

of the charge against her--as if an ingenuous nature, in the very act of

recoiling with horror from a criminal charge the most degrading, and in

the very instant of discovering, with a perfect rapture of alarm, the

too plausible appearance of probability amongst the circumstances, would

be likely to pause, and with attorney-like dexterity, to pick out the

particular circumstance that might admit of being _proved_ to be false,

when the conscience proclaimed, though in despondence for the result,

that all the circumstances were, as to the use made of them, one tissue

of falsehoods. Agnes, who had made a powerful effort in speaking of the

case at all, found her calmness increase as she advanced; and she now

told me, that in reality there were two discoveries which she made in

the same instant, and not one only, which had disarmed her firmness and

ordinary presence of mind. One I have mentioned--the fact of Barratt,

the proprietor of the shop, being the same person who had in former

instances persecuted her in the street; but the other was even more

alarming--it has been said already that it was _not_ a pure matter of

accident that she had visited this particular shop. In reality, that

nursery-maid, of whom some mention has been made above, and in terms

expressing the suspicion with which even then I regarded her, had

persuaded her into going thither by some representations which Agnes

had already ascertained to be altogether unwarranted. Other presumptions

against this girl's fidelity crowded dimly upon my wife's mind at the

very moment of finding her eyes thus suddenly opened. And it was not

five minutes after her first examination, and in fact five minutes

after it had ceased to be of use to her, that she remembered another

circumstance which now, when combined with the sequel, told its own

tale,--the muff had been missed some little time before the 6th of

April. Search had been made for it; but, the particular occasion which

required it having passed off, this search was laid aside for the

present, in the expectation that it would soon reappear in some corner

of the house before it was wanted: then came the sunny day, which made

it no longer useful, and would perhaps have dismissed it entirely from

the recollection of all parties, until it was now brought back in this

memorable way. The name of my wife was embroidered within, upon the

lining, and it thus became a serviceable link to the hellish cabal

against her. Upon reviewing the circumstances from first to last, upon

recalling the manner of the girl at the time when the muff was missed,

and upon combining the whole with her recent deception, by which she had

misled her poor mistress into visiting this shop, Agnes began to see the

entire truth as to this servant's wicked collusion with Barratt, though,

perhaps, it might be too much to suppose her aware of the unhappy result

to which her collusion tended. All this she saw at a glance when it was

too late, for her first examination was over. This girl, I must add, had

left our house during my illness, and she had afterwards a melancholy

end.

One thing surprised me in all this. Barratt's purpose must manifestly

have been to create merely a terror in my poor wife's mind, and to stop

short of any legal consequences, in order to profit of that panic and

confusion for extorting compliances with his hideous pretensions. It

perplexed me, therefore, that he did not appear to have pursued this

manifestly his primary purpose, the other being merely a mask to conceal

his true ends, and also (as he fancied) a means for effecting them. In

this, however, I had soon occasion to find that I was deceived. He had,

but without the knowledge of Agnes, taken such steps as were then open

to him, for making overtures to her with regard to the terms upon which

he would agree to defeat the charge against her by failing to appear.

But the law had travelled too fast for him, and too determinately; so

that, by the time he supposed terror to have operated sufficiently in

favor of his views, it had already become unsafe to venture upon such

explicit proposals as he would otherwise have tried. His own safety was

now at stake, and would have been compromised by any open or written

avowal of the motives on which he had been all along acting. In fact, at

this time he was foiled by the agent in whom he confided; but much

more he had been confounded upon another point--the prodigious interest

manifested by the public. Thus it seems--that, whilst he meditated only

a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally,

to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true

motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a

manner obliged to go forward and consummate the ruin of another.

* * * * *

The state of Agnes, as to health and bodily strength, was now becoming

such that I was forcibly warned--whatsoever I meditated doing, to do

quickly. There was this urgent reason for alarm: once conveyed into

that region of the prison in which sentences like hers were executed, it

became hopeless that I could communicate with her again. All intercourse

whatsoever, and with whomsoever, was then placed under the most rigorous

interdict; and the alarming circumstance was, that this transfer was

governed by no settled rules, but might take place at any hour, and

would certainly be precipitated by the slightest violence on my part,

the slightest indiscretion, or the slightest argument for suspicion.

Hard indeed was the part I had to play, for it was indispensable that

I should appear calm and tranquil, in order to disarm suspicions around

me, whilst continually contemplating the possibility that I myself might

be summoned to extremities which I could not so much as trust myself to

name or distinctly to conceive. But thus stood the case: the Government,

it was understood, angered by the public opposition, resolute for the

triumph of what they called 'principle,' had settled finally that the

sentence should be carried into execution. Now that she, that my Agnes,

being the frail wreck that she had become, could have stood one week of

this sentence practically and literally enforced--was a mere chimera. A

few hours probably of the experiment would have settled that question

by dismissing her to the death she longed for; but because the suffering

would be short, was I to stand by and to witness the degradation--the

pollution--attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her

beautiful tresses would be shorn ignominiously--a felon's dress forced

upon her--a vile taskmaster with authority to----; blistered be the

tongue that could go on to utter, in connection with her innocent name,

the vile dishonors which were to settle upon her person! I, however, and

her brother had taken such resolutions that this result was one barely

possible; and yet I sickened (yes, literally I many times experienced

the effect of physical sickness) at contemplating our own utter childish

helplessness, and recollecting that every night during our seclusion

from the prison the last irreversible step might be taken--and in the

morning we might find a solitary cell, and the angel form that had

illuminated it gone where we could not follow, and leaving behind her

the certainty that we should see her no more. Every night, at the hour

of locking up, _she_, at least, manifestly had a fear that she saw

us for the last time; she put her arms feebly about my neck, sobbed

convulsively, and, I believe, guessed--but, if really so, did not much

reprove or quarrel with the desperate purposes which I struggled with in

regard to her own life. One thing was quite evident--that to the peace

of her latter days, now hurrying to their close, it was indispensable

that she should pass them undivided from me; and possibly, as was

afterwards alleged, when it became easy to allege any thing, some

relenting did take place in high quarters at this time; for upon some

medical reports made just now, a most seasonable indulgence was granted,

viz. that Hannah was permitted to attend her mistress constantly; and

it was also felt as a great alleviation of the horrors belonging to this

prison, that candles were now allowed throughout the nights. But I was

warned privately that these indulgences were with no consent from

the police minister; and that circumstances might soon withdraw the

momentary intercession by which we profited. With this knowledge, we

could not linger in our preparations; we had resolved upon accomplishing

an escape for Agnes, at whatever risk or price; the main difficulty was

her own extreme feebleness, which might forbid her to co-operate with us

in any degree at the critical moment; and the main danger was--delay. We

pushed forward, therefore, in our attempts with prodigious energy, and I

for my part with an energy like that of insanity.

* * * * *

The first attempt we made was upon the fidelity to his trust of the

chief jailer. He was a coarse, vulgar man, brutal in his manners, but

with vestiges of generosity in his character--though damaged a good deal

by his daily associates. Him we invited to a meeting at a tavern in

the neighborhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to

betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which

we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate

circumstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to

wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in

some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed

the terms of our invitation.

These proved to be effectual, as regarded our immediate object of

obtaining an interview of persuasion. The night was wet; and at seven

o'clock, the hour fixed for the interview, we were seated in readiness,

much perplexed to know whether he would take any notice of our

invitation. We had waited three quarters of an hour, when we heard a

heavy lumbering step ascending the stair. The door was thrown open

to its widest extent, and in the centre of the door-way stood a short

stout-built man, and the very broadest I ever beheld--staring at us with

bold inquiring eyes. His salutation was something to this effect.

'What the hell do you gay fellows want with me? What the blazes is this

humbugging letter about? My son, and be hanged! What do you know of my

son?'

Upon this overture we ventured to request that he would come in and

suffer us to shut the door, which we also locked. Next we produced the

official paper nominating his son to a small place in the customs,--not

yielding much, it was true, in the way of salary, but fortunately, and

in accordance with the known wishes of the father, unburdened with any

dangerous trust.

'Well, I suppose I must say thank ye: but what comes next? What am I to

do to pay the damages?' We informed him that for this particular little

service we asked no return.

'No, no,' said he, 'that'll not go down: that cat'll not jump. I'm

not green enough for that. So, say away--what's the damage?' We then

explained that we had certainly a favor and a great one to ask: ['Ay,

I'll be bound you have,' was his parenthesis:] but that for this we were

prepared to offer a separate remuneration; repeating that with respect

to the little place procured for his son, it had not cost us anything,

and therefore we did really and sincerely decline to receive anything

in return; satisfied that, by this little offering, we had procured

the opportunity of this present interview. At this point we withdrew a

covering from the table upon which we had previously arranged a heap of

gold coins, amounting in value to twelve hundred English guineas: this

being the entire sum which circumstances allowed us to raise on so

sudden a warning: for some landed property that we both had was so

settled and limited, that we could not convert it into money either

by way of sale, loan, or mortgage. This sum, stating to him its exact

amount, we offered to his acceptance, upon the single condition that he

would look aside, or wink hard, or (in whatever way he chose to express

it) would make, or suffer to be made, such facilities for our liberating

a female prisoner as we would point out. He mused: full five minutes he

sat deliberating without opening his lips. At length he shocked us by

saying, in a firm, decisive tone, that left us little hope of altering

his resolution,--'No: gentlemen, it's a very fair offer, and a good deal

of money for a single prisoner. I think I can guess at the person. It's

a fair offer--fair enough. But, bless your heart! if I were to do the

thing you want--why perhaps another case might be overlooked: but this

prisoner, no: there's too much depending. No, they would turn me out of

my place. Now the place is worth more to me in the long run than what

you offer: though you bid fair enough, if it were only for my time in

it. But look here: in case I can get my son to come into harness, I'm

expecting to get the office for him after I've retired. So I can't do

it. But I'll tell you what: you've been kind to my son: and therefore

I'll not say a word about it. You're safe for me. And so good-night

to you.' Saying which, and standing no further question, he walked

resolutely out of the room and down stairs.

Two days we mourned over this failure, and scarcely knew which way

to turn for another ray of hope;--on the third morning we received

intelligence that this very jailer had been attacked by the fever,

which, after long desolating the city, had at length made its way into

the prison. In a very few days the jailer was lying without hope of

recovery: and of necessity another person was appointed to fill his

station for the present. This person I had seen, and I liked him less

by much than the one he succeeded: he had an Italian appearance, and he

wore an air of Italian subtlety and dissimulation. I was surprised to

find, on proposing the same service to him, and on the same terms, that

he made no objection whatever, but closed instantly with my offers. In

prudence, however, I had made this change in the articles: a sum equal

to two hundred English guineas, or one-sixth part of the whole money, he

was to receive beforehand as a retaining fee; but the remainder was to

be paid only to himself, or to anybody of his appointing, at the very

moment of our finding the prison gates thrown open to us. He spoke

fairly enough, and seemed to meditate no treachery; nor was there any

obvious or known interest to serve by treachery; and yet I doubted him

grievously.

The night came: it was chosen as a gala night, one of two nights

throughout the year in which the prisoners were allowed to celebrate a

great national event: and in those days of relaxed prison management

the utmost license was allowed to the rejoicing. This indulgence was

extended to prisoners of all classes, though, of course, under more

restrictions with regard to the criminal class. Ten o'clock came--the

hour at which we had been instructed to hold ourselves in readiness.

We had been long prepared. Agnes had been dressed by Hannah in such a

costume externally (a man's hat and cloak, &c.) that, from her height,

she might easily have passed amongst a mob of masquerading figures in

the debtors' halls and galleries for a young stripling. Pierpoint and

myself were also to a certain degree disguised; so far, at least, that

we should not have been recognized at any hurried glance by those of the

prison officers who had become acquainted with our persons. We were all

more or less disguised about the face; and in that age when masks were

commonly used at all hours by people of a certain rank, there would have

been nothing suspicious in any possible costume of the kind in a night

like this, if we could succeed in passing for friends of debtors.

I am impatient of these details, and I hasten over the ground. One

entire hour passed away, and no jailer appeared. We began to despond

heavily; and Agnes, poor thing! was now the most agitated of us all.

At length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A

few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars

unfastening. The jailer entered--drunk, and much disposed to be

insolent. I thought it advisable to give him another bribe, and he

resumed the fawning insinuation of his manner. He now directed us, by

passages which he pointed out, to gain the other side of the prison.

There we were to mix with the debtors and their mob of friends, and

to await his joining us, which in that crowd he could do without much

suspicion. He wished us to traverse the passages separately; but this

was impossible, for it was necessary that one of us should support Agnes

on each side. I previously persuaded her to take a small quantity

of brandy, which we rejoiced to see had given her, at this moment of

starting, a most seasonable strength and animation. The gloomy passages

were more than usually empty, for all the turnkeys were employed in a

vigilant custody of the gates, and examination of the parties going out.

So the jailer had told us, and the news alarmed us. We came at length to

a turning which brought us in sight of a strong iron gate, that divided

the two main quarters of the prison. For this we had not been prepared.

The man, however, opened the gate without a word spoken, only putting

out his hand for a fee; and in my joy, perhaps, I gave him one

imprudently large. After passing this gate, the distant uproar of the

debtors guided us to the scene of their merriment; and when there, such

was the tumult and the vast multitude assembled, that we now hoped in

good earnest to accomplish our purpose without accident. Just at this

moment the jailer appeared in the distance; he seemed looking towards

us, and at length one of our party could distinguish that he was

beckoning to us. We went forward, and found him in some agitation, real

or counterfeit. He muttered a word or two quite unintelligible about the

man at the wicket, told us we must wait a while, and he would then see

what could be done for us. We were beginning to demur, and to express

the suspicions which now too seriously arose, when he, seeing, or

affecting to see some object of alarm, pushed us with a hurried movement

into a cell opening upon the part of the gallery at which we were now

standing. Not knowing whether we really might not be retreating from

some danger, we could do no otherwise than comply with his signals; but

we were troubled at finding ourselves immediately locked in from the

outside, and thus apparently all our motions had only sufficed to

exchange one prison for another.

We were now completely in the dark, and found, by a hard breathing from

one corner of the little dormitory, that it was not unoccupied. Having

taken care to provide ourselves separately with means for striking a

light, we soon had more than one torch burning. The brilliant light

falling upon the eyes of a man who lay stretched on the iron bedstead,

woke him. It proved to be my friend the under-jailer, Ratcliffe, but

no longer holding any office in the prison. He sprang up, and a rapid

explanation took place. He had become a prisoner for debt; and on this

evening, after having caroused through the day with some friends

from the country, had retired at an early hour to sleep away

his intoxication. I on my part thought it prudent to intrust him

unreservedly with our situation and purposes, not omitting our gloomy

suspicions. Ratcliffe looked, with a pity that won my love, upon the

poor wasted Agnes. He had seen her on her first entrance into the

prison, had spoken to her, and therefore knew _from_ what she had

fallen, _to_ what. Even then he had felt for her; how much more at this

time, when he beheld, by the fierce light of the torches, her wo-worn

features!

'Who was it,' he asked eagerly, 'you made the bargain with? Manasseh?'

'The same.'

'Then I can tell you this--not a greater villain walks the earth. He is

a Jew from Portugal; he has betrayed many a man, and will many another,

unless he gets his own neck stretched, which might happen, if I told all

I know.'

'But what was it probable that this man meditated? Or how could it

profit him to betray us?'

'That's more than I can tell. He wants to get your money, and that he

doesn't know how to bring about without doing his part. But that's what

he never _will_ do, take my word for it. That would cut him out of all

chance for the head-jailer's place.' He mused a little, and then told us

that he could himself put us outside the prison walls, and _would_ do it

without fee or reward. 'But we must be quiet, or that devil will bethink

him of me. I'll wager something he thought that I was out merry-making

like the rest; and if he should chance to light upon the truth, he'll be

back in no time.' Ratcliffe then removed an old fire-grate, at the back

of which was an iron plate, that swung round into a similar fire-place

in the contiguous cell. From that, by a removal of a few slight

obstacles, we passed, by a long avenue, into the chapel. Then he left

us, whilst he went out alone to reconnoitre his ground. Agnes was now

in so pitiable a condition of weakness, as we stood on the very brink of

our final effort, that we placed her in a pew, where she could rest as

upon a sofa. Previously we had stood upon graves, and with monuments

more or less conspicuous all around us: some raised by friends to

the memory of friends--some by subscriptions in the prison--some by

children, who had risen into prosperity, to the memory of a father,

brother, or other relative, who had died in captivity. I was grieved

that these sad memorials should meet the eye of my wife at this moment

of awe and terrific anxiety. Pierpoint and I were well armed, and all

of us determined not to suffer a recapture, now that we were free of the

crowds that made resistance hopeless. This Agnes easily perceived;

and _that_, by suggesting a bloody arbitration, did not lessen her

agitation. I hoped therefore, that, by placing her in the pew, I might

at least liberate her for the moment from the besetting memorials of

sorrow and calamity. But, as if in the very teeth of my purpose, one of

the large columns which supported the roof of the chapel, had its basis

and lower part of the shaft in this very pew. On the side of it, and

just facing her as she lay reclining on the cushions, appeared a

mural tablet, with a bas-relief in white marble, to the memory of two

children, twins, who had lived and died at the same time, and in

this prison--children who had never breathed another air than that of

captivity, their parents having passed many years within these walls,

under confinement for debt. The sculptures were not remarkable, being a

trite, but not the less affecting, representation of angels descending

to receive the infants; but the hallowed words of the inscription,

distinct and legible--'Suffer little children to come unto me, and

forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God'--met her eye,

and, by the thoughts they awakened, made me fear that she would become

unequal to the exertions which yet awaited her. At this moment Ratcliffe

returned, and informed us that all was right; and that, from the ruinous

state of all the buildings which surrounded the chapel, no difficulty

remained for us, who were, in fact, beyond the strong part of the

prison, excepting at a single door, which we should be obliged to break

down. But had we any means arranged for pursuing our flight, and turning

this escape to account when out of confinement? All that, I assured him,

was provided for long ago. We proceeded, and soon reached the door. We

had one crow-bar amongst us, but beyond that had no better weapons

than the loose stones found about some new-made graves in the chapel.

Ratcliffe and Pierpoint, both powerful men, applied themselves by turns

to the door, whilst Hannah and I supported Agnes. The door did not

yield, being of enormous strength; but the wall did, and a large mass

of stone-work fell outwards, twisting the door aside; so that, by

afterwards working with our hands, we removed stones many enough to

admit of our egress. Unfortunately this aperture was high above the

ground, and it was necessary to climb over a huge heap of loose rubbish

in order to profit by it. My brother-in-law passed first in order to

receive my wife, quite helpless at surmounting the obstacle by her own

efforts, out of my arms. He had gone through the opening, and, turning

round so as to face me, he naturally could see something that I did

_not_ see. 'Look behind!' he called out rapidly. I did so, and saw the

murderous villain Manasseh with his arm uplifted, and in the act of

cutting at my wife, nearly insensible as she was, with a cutlass. The

blow was not for me, but for her, as the fugitive prisoner; and the law

would have borne him out in the act. I saw, I comprehended the whole. I

groped, as far as I could without letting my wife drop, for my pistols;

but all that I could do would have been unavailing, and too late--she

would have been murdered in my arms. But--and that was what none of us

saw--neither I, nor Pierpoint, nor the hound Manasseh--one person stood

back in the shade; one person had seen, but had not uttered a word

on seeing Manasseh advancing through the shades; one person only

had forecast the exact succession of all that was coming; me she saw

embarrassed and my hands preoccupied--Pierpoint and Ratcliffe useless

by position--and the gleam of the dog's eye directed her to his aim. The

crow-bar was leaning against the shattered wall. This she had silently

seized. One blow knocked up the sword; a second laid the villain

prostrate. At this moment appeared another of the turnkeys advancing

from the rear, for the noise of our assault upon the door had drawn

attention in the interior of the prison, from which, however, no great

number of assistants could on this dangerous night venture to absent

themselves. What followed for the next few minutes hurried onwards,

incident crowding upon incident, like the motions of a dream:--Manasseh,

lying on the ground, yelled out, 'The bell! the bell!' to him who

followed. The man understood, and made for the belfry-door attached

to the chapel; upon which Pierpoint drew a pistol, and sent the bullet

whizzing past his ear so truly, that fear made the man obedient to the

counter-orders of Pierpoint for the moment. He paused and awaited the

issue. In a moment had all cleared the wall, traversed the waste ground

beyond it, lifted Agnes over the low railing, shaken hands with our

benefactor Ratcliffe, and pushed onwards as rapidly as we were able

to the little dark lane, a quarter of a mile distant, where had stood

waiting for the last two hours a chaise-and-four.

[Ratcliffe, before my story closes, I will pursue to the last of my

acquaintance with him, according to the just claims of his services. He

had privately whispered to me, as we went along, that he could speak to

the innocence of that lady, pointing to my wife, better than anybody.

He was the person whom (as then holding an office in the prison) Barratt

had attempted to employ as agent in conveying any messages that he found

it safe to send--obscurely hinting the terms on which he would desist

from prosecution. Ratcliffe had at first undertaken the negotiation from

mere levity of character. But when the story and the public interest

spread, and after himself becoming deeply struck by the prisoner's

affliction, beauty, and reputed innocence, he had pursued it only as a

means of entrapping Barratt into such written communications and such

private confessions of the truth as might have served Agnes effectually.

He wanted the art, however, to disguise his purposes: Barratt came to

suspect him violently, and feared his evidence so far, even for those

imperfect and merely oral overtures which he had really sent through

Ratcliffe--that on the very day of the trial, he, as was believed,

though by another nominally, contrived that Ratcliffe should be arrested

for debt; and, after harassing him with intricate forms of business, had

finally caused him to be conveyed to prison. Ratcliffe was thus involved

in his own troubles at the time; and afterwards supposed that, without

written documents to support his evidence, he could not be of much

service to the re-establisment of my wife's reputation. Six months after

his services in the night-escape from the prison, I saw him, and pressed

him to take the money so justly forfeited to him by Manasseh's perfidy.

He would, however, be persuaded to take no more than paid his debts. A

second and a third time his debts were paid by myself and Pierpoint.

But the same habits of intemperance and dissolute pleasure which led him

into these debts, finally ruined his constitution; and he died, though

otherwise of a fine generous manly nature, a martyr to dissipation at

the early age of twenty-nine. With respect to his prison confinement, it

was so frequently recurring in his life, and was alleviated by so many

indulgences, that he scarcely viewed it as a hardship: having once been

an officer of the prison, and having thus formed connections with the

whole official establishment, and done services to many of them, and

being of so convivial a turn, he was, even as a prisoner, treated with

distinction, and considered as a privileged son of the house.]

It was just striking twelve o'clock as we entered the lane where the

carriage was drawn up. Rain, about the profoundest I had ever witnessed,

was falling. Though near to midsummer, the night had been unusually dark

to begin with, and from the increasing rain had become much more so. We

could see nothing; and at first we feared that some mistake had occurred

as to the station of the carriage--in which case we might have sought

for it vainly through the intricate labyrinth of the streets in

that quarter. I first descried it by the light of a torch, reflected

powerfully from the large eyes of the leaders. All was ready.

Horse-keepers were at the horses' heads. The postilions were mounted;

each door had the steps let down: Agnes was lifted in: Hannah and I

followed: Pierpoint mounted his horse; and at the word--Oh! how strange

a word!--'_All's right_,' the horses sprang off like leopards, a manner

ill-suited to the slippery pavement of a narrow street. At that moment,

but we valued it little indeed, we heard the prison-bell ringing out

loud and clear. Thrice within the first three minutes we had to pull up

suddenly, on the brink of formidable accidents, from the dangerous

speed we maintained, and which, nevertheless, the driver had orders to

maintain, as essential to our plan. All the stoppages and hinderances

of every kind along the road had been anticipated previously, and met by

contrivance, of one kind or other; and Pierpoint was constantly a

little ahead of us to attend to anything that had been neglected. The

consequence of these arrangements was--that no person along the road

could possibly have assisted to trace us by any thing in our appearance:

for we passed all objects at too flying a pace, and through darkness too

profound, to allow of any one feature in our equipage being distinctly

noticed. Ten miles out of town, a space which we traversed in forty-four

minutes, a second relay of horses was ready; but we carried on the same

postilions throughout. Six miles ahead of this distance we had a second

relay; and with this set of horses, after pushing two miles further

along the road, we crossed by a miserable lane five miles long, scarcely

even a bridge road, into another of the great roads from the capital;

and by thus crossing the country, we came back upon the city at a point

far distant from that at which we left it. We had performed a distance

of forty-two miles in three hours, and lost a fourth hour upon the

wretched five miles of cross-road. It was, therefore, four o'clock, and

broad daylight, when we drew near the suburbs of the city; but a most

happy accident now favored us; a fog the most intense now prevailed;

nobody could see an object six feet distant; we alighted in an

uninhabited new-built street, plunged into the fog, thus confounding our

traces to any observer. We then stepped into a hackney-coach which had

been stationed at a little distance. Thence, according to our plan, we

drove to a miserable quarter of the town, whither the poor only and the

wretched resorted; mounted a gloomy dirty staircase, and, befriended by

the fog, still growing thicker and thicker, and by the early hour of the

morning, reached a house previously hired, which, if shocking to the eye

and the imagination from its squalid appearance and its gloom, still

was a home--a sanctuary--an asylum from treachery, from captivity, from

persecution. Here Pierpoint for the present quitted us: and once more

Agnes, Hannah, and I, the shattered members of a shattered family, were

thus gathered together in a house of our own.

Yes: once again, daughter of the hills, thou sleptst as heretofore in my

encircling arms; but not again in that peace which crowned thy innocence

in those days, and should have crowned it now. Through the whole of our

flying journey, in some circumstances at its outset strikingly recalling

to me that blessed one which followed our marriage, Agnes slept away

unconscious of our movements. She slept through all that day and the

following night; and I watched over her with as much jealousy of all

that might disturb her, as a mother watches over her new-born baby; for

I hoped, I fancied, that a long--long rest, a rest, a halcyon calm, a

deep, deep Sabbath of security, might prove healing and medicinal. I

thought wrong; her breathing became more disturbed, and sleep was now

haunted by dreams; all of us, indeed, were agitated by dreams; the past

pursued me, and the present, for high rewards had been advertised by

Government to those who traced us; and though for the moment we were

secure, because we never went abroad, and could not have been naturally

sought in such a neighborhood, still that very circumstance would

eventually operate against us. At length, every night I dreamed of

our insecurity under a thousand forms; but more often by far my dreams

turned upon our wrongs; wrath moved me rather than fear. Every night,

for the greater part, I lay painfully and elaborately involved, by deep

sense of wrong,

'--in long orations, which I pleaded

Before unjust tribunals.'

[Footnote: From a MS. poem of a great living Poet.]

And for poor Agnes, her also did the remembrance of mighty wrongs occupy

through vast worlds of sleep in the same way--though colored by

that tenderness which belonged to her gentler nature. One dream in

particular--a dream of sublime circumstances--she repeated to me so

movingly, with a pathos so thrilling, that by some profound sympathy

it transplanted itself to my own sleep, settled itself there, and is to

this hour a part of the fixed dream scenery which revolves at intervals

through my sleeping life. This it was:--She would hear a trumpet

sound--though perhaps as having been the prelude to the solemn entry of

the judges at a town which she had once visited in her childhood; other

preparations would follow, and at last all the solemnities of a great

trial would shape themselves and fall into settled images. The audience

was assembled, the judges were arrayed, the court was set. The prisoner

was cited. Inquest was made, witnesses were called; and false witnesses

came tumultuously to the bar. Then again a trumpet was heard, but the

trumpet of a mighty archangel; and then would roll away thick clouds and

vapors. Again the audience, but another audience, was assembled; again

the tribunal was established; again the court was set; but a tribunal

and a court--how different to her! _That_ had been composed of men

seeking indeed for truth, but themselves erring and fallible creatures;

the witnesses had been full of lies, the judges of darkness. But

here was a court composed of heavenly witnesses--here was a righteous

tribunal--and then at last a judge that could not be deceived. The judge

smote with his eye a person who sought to hide himself in the crowd;

the guilty man stepped forward; the poor prisoner was called up to the

presence of the mighty judge; suddenly the voice of a little child was

heard ascending before her. Then the trumpet sounded once again; and

then there were new heavens and a new earth; and her tears and

her agitation (for she had seen her little Francis) awoke the poor

palpitating dreamer.

* * * * *

Two months passed on: nothing could possibly be done materially to raise

the standard of those wretched accommodations which the house

offered. The dilapidated walls, the mouldering plaster, the blackened

mantel-pieces, the stained and polluted wainscots--what could be

attempted to hide or to repair all this by those who durst not venture

abroad? Yet whatever could be done, Hannah did; and, in the mean time,

very soon indeed my Agnes ceased to see or to be offended by these

objects. First of all her sight went from her; and nothing which

appealed to that sense could ever more offend her. It is to me the one

only consolation I have, that my presence and that of Hannah, with such

innocent frauds as we concerted together, made her latter days pass in

a heavenly calm, by persuading her that our security was absolute,

and that all search after us had ceased, under a belief on the part of

Government that we had gained the shelter of a foreign land. All this

was a delusion; but it was a delusion--blessed be Heaven! which

lasted exactly as long as her life, and was just commensurate with its

necessity. I hurry over the final circumstances.

There was fortunately now, even for me, no fear that the hand of any

policeman or emissary of justice could effectually disturb the latter

days of my wife; for, besides pistols always lying loaded in an inner

room, there happened to be a long narrow passage on entering the house,

which, by means of a blunderbuss, I could have swept effectually, and

cleared many times over; and I know what to do in a last extremity.

Just two months it was, to a day, since we had entered the house; and

it happened that the medical attendant upon Agnes, who awakened no

suspicion by his visits, had prescribed some opiate or anodyne which had

not come; being dark early, for it was now September, I had ventured out

to fetch it. In this I conceived there could be no danger. On my return

I saw a man examining the fastenings of the door. He made no opposition

to my entrance, nor seemed much to observe it--but I was disturbed. Two

hours after, both Hannah and I heard a noise about the door, and voices

in low conversation. It is remarkable that Agnes heard this also--so

quick had grown her hearing. She was agitated, but was easily calmed;

and at ten o'clock we were all in bed. The hand of Agnes was in mine;

so only she felt herself in security. She had been restless for an hour,

and talking at intervals in sleep. Once she certainly wakened, for she

pressed her lips to mine. Two minutes after, I heard something in

her breathing which did not please me. I rose hastily--brought a

light--raised her head--two long, long gentle sighs, that scarcely moved

the lips, were all that could be perceived. At that moment, at that very

moment, Hannah called out to me that the door was surrounded. 'Open it!'

I said; six men entered; Agnes it was they sought; I pointed to the bed;

they advanced, gazed, and walked away in silence.

After this I wandered about, caring little for life or its affairs, and

roused only at times to think of vengeance upon all who had contributed

to lay waste my happiness. In this pursuit, however, I was confounded

as much by my own thoughts as by the difficulties of accomplishing my

purpose. To assault and murder either of the two principal agents in

this tragedy, what would it be, what other effect could it have, than to

invest them with the character of injured and suffering people, and thus

to attract a pity or a forgiveness at least to their persons which never

otherwise could have illustrated their deaths? I remembered, indeed, the

words of a sea-captain who had taken such vengeance as had offered at

the moment upon his bitter enemy and persecutor (a young passenger on

board his ship), who had informed against him at the Custom-house on his

arrival in port, and had thus effected the confiscation of his ship,

and the ruin of the captain's family. The vengeance, and it was all

that circumstances allowed, consisted in coming behind the young man

clandestinely and pushing him into the deep waters of the dock, when,

being unable to swim, he perished by drowning. 'And the like,' said the

captain, when musing on his trivial vengeance, 'and the like happens

to many an honest sailor.' Yes, thought I, the captain was right. The

momentary shock of a pistol-bullet--what is it? Perhaps it may save

the wretch after all from the pangs of some lingering disease; and then

again I shall have the character of a murderer, if known to have shot

him; he will with many people have no such character, but at worst the

character of a man too harsh (they will say), and possibly mistaken in

protecting his property. And then, if not known as the man who shot

him, where is the shadow even of vengeance? Strange it seemed to me, and

passing strange, that I should be the person to urge arguments in behalf

of letting this man escape. For at one time I had as certainly, as

inexorably, doomed him as ever I took any resolution in my life. But the

fact is, and I began to see it upon closer view, it is not easy by any

means to take an adequate vengeance for any injury beyond a very trivial

standard; and that with common magnanimity one does not care to avenge.

Whilst I was in this mood of mind, still debating with myself whether

I should or should not contaminate my hands with the blood of this

monster, and still unable to shut my eyes upon one fact, viz. that my

buried Agnes could above all things have urged me to abstain from such

acts of violence, too evidently useless, listlessly and scarcely knowing

what I was in quest of, I strayed by accident into a church where a

venerable old man was preaching at the very moment I entered; he was

either delivering as a text, or repeating in the course of his sermon,

these words--'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' By

some accident also he fixed his eyes upon me at the moment; and

this concurrence with the subject then occupying my thoughts so much

impressed me, that I determined very seriously to review my half-formed

purposes of revenge; and well it was that I did so: for in that same

week an explosion of popular fury brought the life of this wretched

Barratt to a shocking termination, pretty much resembling the fate of

the De Witts in Holland. And the consequences to me were such, and so

full of all the consolation and indemnification which this world could

give me, that I have often shuddered since then at the narrow escape

I had had from myself intercepting this remarkable retribution. The

villain had again been attempting to play off the same hellish scheme

with a beautiful young rustic which had succeeded in the case of my

ill-fated Agnes. But the young woman in this instance had a high, and,

in fact, termagant spirit. Rustic as she was, she had been warned of the

character of the man; everybody, in fact, was familiar with the recent

tragedy. Either her lover or her brother happened to be waiting for

her outside the window. He saw in part the very tricks in the act of

perpetration by which some article or other, meant to be claimed as

stolen property, was conveyed into a parcel she had incautiously laid

down. He heard the charge against her made by Barratt, and seconded by

his creatures--heard her appeal--sprang to her aid--dragged the ruffian

into the street, when in less time than the tale could be told, and

before the police (though tolerably alert) could effectually interpose

for his rescue, the mob had so used or so abused the opportunity they

had long wished for, that he remained the mere disfigured wreck of what

had once been a man, rather than a creature with any resemblance to

humanity. I myself heard the uproar at a distance, and the shouts and

yells of savage exultation; they were sounds I shall never forget,

though I did not at that time know them for what they were, or

understood their meaning. The result, however, to me was something

beyond this, and worthy to have been purchased with my heart's blood.

Barratt still breathed; spite of his mutilations he could speak; he was

rational. One only thing he demanded--it was that his dying confession

might be taken. Two magistrates and a clergyman attended. He gave a

list of those whom he had trepanned, and had failed to trepan, by his

artifices and threats, into the sacrifice of their honor. He expired

before the record was closed, but not before he had placed my wife's

name in the latter list as the one whose injuries in his dying moments

most appalled him. This confession on the following day went into the

hands of the hostile minister, and my revenge was perfect.