He evidently did not know the words of the song, for one of his self-constituted teachers kept prompting him, amid roars of laughter. It was a villainous song, and Barnabas hoped the lad didn't understand it. He had been brought in the day before, protesting his innocence in eager childish fashion,—as if it mattered to any one there whether he was innocent or not! At any rate, if he was when he entered, he hadn't much chance of being so when he should leave. Barnabas looked on in disgust for a few minutes, and then turned to a wardsman.
"Surely," he said, "that lad hadn't ought to be here?"
The middle yard in which they stood was supposed to be occupied by the most abandoned and worst class of criminals, men charged with the most revolting crimes; but the wardsmen of Newgate were apparently apt to consider the incorrigible offence, the offence of poverty (indeed, it is hard of cure) and an inability to pay ward dues, ranked the offender with the most depraved.
"Oh! you're the Lord Chief Justice in disguise, perhaps!" said the man. "Or his grace the Archbishop!"
"If I was the judge," said the preacher, "I'd far sooner ha' had that boy strung up to the nearest lamp post, guilty or no', than ha' pitchforked him in here, to ruin his body an' soul both! It 'ud ha' been a deal more merciful."
"Such a 'ighly moral cove as you 'ad better interfere," said the man. "The parson don't come in 'ere at present; he give up comin' after Hopping Jack took to assistin' him in 'is duties."
The speaker laughed silently over some hidden joke.
"He comes in just afore the 'angman now to the men as is fixed for 'anging, a sort of last grace before meat," he said. "They ain't so larky then."
Barnabas had not attended to the last remark; something he had heard or seen made his hand clench; and he turned on the wardsman hotly.
"Can ye do nothing, man?" he said. "You put that child here, because he couldn't pay th' ward dues (which be unlawful extortion anyway); he's only up for a matter o' stealin'; it 'ull lay at your door if those brutes make him——"