She bent her head in reply.
When she was seated in the cab she put out her hand to him, and as she leaned forward he saw her awful face.
"God help you, Mrs. Routh," he said, with intense pity. Then she said, in a clear low voice, whose tone he remembers, as he remembers the face, these words:
"There is no God. If there were, there could be no such men as he, and no such women as I."
When she was a short distance from the police-court, and beyond the solicitor's sight, she called to the driver from the window that she had changed her purpose, and desired to be set down at St Paul's Churchyard.
The arrival of the prison-van at Newgate excited the usual sensation which it produces among the public who congregate in the neighbourhood of the prison, to see it discharge its wretched contents; the majority of the crowd were, as usual, of the dangerous classes; and it would have afforded matter of speculation to the curious in such things to look at their faces and calculate, according to the indices there given, how many of the number would one day take a personal part in a spectacle similar to that at which they were gazing with a curiosity which renewed itself daily. On this occasion the sentiment prevalent on the outside of the grim fortress of crime was shared in an unusual degree by the officials, and general, not criminal, inhabitants. Not that a supposed murderer's arrival was any novelty at Newgate, but that the supposed murderer in the present instance was not of the class among which society ordinarily recruits its murderers, and the circumstances both of the crime and of its discovery were exceptional. Thus, when the gate unclosed by which the prisoners were to be admitted, the yard was full of spectators.
Four prisoners were committed that day: a burglar and his assistant; a merchant's clerk who had managed a forgery so remarkably cleverly that it needed only not to have been found out, to have been a stroke of brilliant genius; and Stewart Routh. The door was opened, the group of spectators gathered around. First the burglar, a wiry little man, more like the tailor of real life than the conventional hero of the centre-bit and the jemmy. Next, his assistant, an individual of jovial appearance, tempered with responsibility, like a popular president of school feasts, or the leader of a village choir. Thirdly, the forger, remarkable for nothing in his appearance except its abjectness of fright and bewilderment. These had emerged from the darksome recesses of the hideous caravan, the first and no slight instalment of their punishment, and had been received with comparative indifference. A passing glance was all that was accorded to them by the spectators waiting the appearance of the "gentleman" who was in such very serious "trouble."
But the gentleman did not follow his temporary associates, though the policeman in attendance held the door open, and called to him to "come on." Then he stepped into the van and up to the compartment in which Routh had been placed. After an elapse of a full minute he emerged, and addressing the lookers-on generally, he said:
"There's something queer the matter with him, and I think he's dead!"
A stir and confusion among the crowd, and the governor called for. A matter-of-fact turnkey advances, saying, in a business-like tone: