“Pies, all hot—all hot,” shouted out an itinerant vendor of those delicacies. “Here’s some of the right sort, all hot.”
Several persons became purchasers. The morning air had given them an appetite, and they devoured the pies with evident relish.
A man in a black suit, with a white necktie and a low crowned hat, proceeded to distribute tracts to the gaping throng.
In a few moments he got unmercifully chaffed, but heedless of this he proceeded on his mission.
The hours passed on. It was nearly eight o’clock.
A man in a sable suit, bent form, and a feeble step, made for the door of one of the houses opposite to the gaol. He wore green spectacles, and to all appearance was a cripple, with a false arm. He passed through the doorway, and in a few moments after this had taken up his position at one of the front windows of the second floor of the house he had entered.
He seemed to be a broken, afflicted creature, who was past the meridian of life. His form was bent with premature age or disease—it was not possible to say which.
This person, who was disguised so completely that his own mother would not have known him, was our hero, Charles Peace.
He had come to see the last of Ned Gregson.
His make-up suggested a Dissenting minister. He seated himself by the side of a tall, thin, serious-looking person, of quiet manners and gentlemanly appearance.