OCR
46 c What’s the matter now?" said the man carelessly. “A young fogle-hunter,” replied the man who had Oliver in charge. sir?” inquired the man with the keys. “Yes, I am," replied the old gentleman ; “but I am not sure that this boy actually took the handkerchief. I—I’d rather not press the case.” “Must go before the magistrate now, sir,” replied the man. “ His worship will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows.” This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a small stone cell. Here he was searched, and nothing been found upon him, locked up. This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not so light. It was most intolerably dirty, for it was Monday morning, and it had been tenanted since Saturday night by six drunken peole. But this is nothing. In our stationouses, men and women are every night confined on the most trivial charges—the word is worth noting—in dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate, ocfound guilty, and under sentence of death, are palaces! Let any man who doubts this, compare the two. The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver, when the key grated in the iock; and turned with a sigh to the book which had been the innocent cause of all this disturbance. “There is something in that boy’s face,” said the old gentleman to himself, as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of the book in a thoughtful manner, “something that touches and interests me. Can he be innocent? He looked like— By the bye,” exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky, “God bless my soul! where have I seen something like that look before ?” After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked with the same meditative face into a back ante-room opening from the yard; and there, retiring into a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many years. “* No,” said the old gentleman shaking his head; “it must be imagination.” He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so -— faces of friends and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers, peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were others that the grave had changed to ghastl trophies of death, but which the mind, superior to his power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven. But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver’s features bore a trace; so he heaved a sigh over the recollections he had awakened ; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them again in the pages of the musty book. — e was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book hastily, and was at once ushered into the presence of the renowned Mr. Fang. The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall. Mr. Fang sat behind a bar at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited, trembling very much at the awfulness of the scene. : Mr. Fang was a middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair; and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought an action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages. _ The old gentleman bowed respectfully, and, advancing to the magistrate’s Né said, suiting the action to the word, “ That is my name and address, sir." He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be questioned, Now, it-so happened, that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a leading article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent decision of his, and commending him, for the three hunparticular notice of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. He was out of temper, and he looked up with an angry scowl,