And on his brest a bloudie crosse he bore,
The deare remembrance of his dying Lord
For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore,
And dead as living ever Him ador'd.
—Spenser.
It was on a close breathless day in September that Meg first saw Newgate.
Nearly fifty years have wrought many changes for the better (as well as some few for the worse) in London.
The Holborn Tom and Meg Thorpe walked down was more unsavoury, noisier, and far less regulated as to traffic than the Holborn of to-day.
The immense flow of people, the street cries, the jostling and bustling, were new to Meg; for, though she had lived in London half her life, she had never seen this side of it before.
All at once she understood how it had impressed Barnabas.
"He thinks London so terrible, and overpowering!" she said. "And I never knew what he meant! Now, I see——"
"Mind where ye are walkin'," said Tom. "Good Lord! If either o' ye had had one quarter o' a grain o' common-sense, ye'd ha' kept clear of a place where there's a many too many without ye, an' not room to hear one's own voice in! There! that's where he is!"