CHARLEY WARBECK’S FRIENDS—PRISON LIFE—TRUE LOVE—THE SURPRISE AND PARDON.
Mr. Charles Warbeck had now been in confinement for more than three months, and even had become more or less reconciled to his lot.
His luxuriant head of hair was cropped so closely, according to “regulations,” by the prison barber that very little capillary substance was left upon his cranium, which now looked very much like a close-worn blacking-brush.
His highly-prized bit of whisker, upon which he had bestowed so much fondness and care—his moustacheos, also, which, with the aid of unguent, much combing, brushing, and Hungarian paste, had assumed of yore quite a fierce and military twist—were all now sacrificed to the barbarous razor.
And shorn of these hirsute charms, he felt very little sorrow or humiliation when vested and officially enrobed in the zebra-like suit of striped flannel jacket and trousers, which was the apparel of the prison.
Although by no means a rogue, he was herded with a gang of ruffians, murderers, swindlers, pickpockets and the very off-scourings of all the earth.
And such society, it must be confessed, was a much greater punishment to his sensitive feelings than the confinement, remorse, or a thousand inconveniences and annoyances to which he was daily and hourly subjected.
Had he been of pliant nature he might soon have become as utterly depraved as his companions.
But his demeanour was so gentle, his manner so mild, and general deportment so humble and resigned, that the prison authorities soon removed him from the bands of ruffians with whom he had hitherto laboured in the quarries and on the public roads.
He seldom spoke, and although there was a mild resignation in his looks and bearing, his eyes had a light of honest independence about them, and his voice a firmness of tone which told of a guiltless soul suffering from some chance misfortune over which, in a moment of temptation, it had not sufficient control.