Into the Highways and Hedges

by F. F. Montrésor

Those Newgate sermons were preached with the intense fervour of one who believed that the "night was soon coming" for many of his hearers. But the constant strain on mind and body was growing more evident: the preacher was no longer the man he had been when he had first entered Newgate, and protested so vigorously against the iniquities of the press yard; he had grown quite grey in these three months, and his broad shoulders were bowed.

Dr. Merrill was moved to violent indignation on the subject. It was sheer waste of the most magnificent constitution he had ever come across, he said; and Barnabas Thorpe was innocent. Barnabas himself was not indignant; his was not the sort of nature that turns sour in adversity. He generally took things simply, with few questionings as to the why and wherefore; but the hopefulness that had characterised him as to his own prospects rather failed about this time.

"It's allus afore seemed to me most like that I'd get what I wanted, for I used to feel somehow that there was such a deal o' pushin' power in wanting," he said once. "Two months back I hadn't a doubt but what I'd be proved clear; but I doan't know now. Arter all, when I come to think, I've never had what I've most set my heart on for my own sake, though I've been helped in my work. Some people want sunshine, and some are coarser natured, maybe, and best managed t'other way. Happen I won't be proved innocent; happen I'm the sort as is best without much satisfaction. But it seems as if that 'ud be hard on my wife, for she's quite a different make to me, and a much finer; and I can't somehow think as she needs sorrow. My poor little lass! she's had enough."

The very tone of the remark showed how the natural buoyant spirit had been knocked out of him; though his passion for working in season and out of season was even stronger than before.

He was gentler than he had been; and the most miserable turned to him with an instinctive hope that the mercy of heaven might possibly, after all, be as deep as the mercy of this man, even if equally uncompromising. He saw Margaret seldom now. He often was not fit to stand at the grating; and, moreover, he feared that these unsatisfactory meetings were almost more pain than pleasure to his darling.

Early in November, Hopping Jack, together with three accomplices, was tried, and condemned to death; but while the sentence of hanging was recorded oftener then than it is at present, there was also a greater probability of getting off. In nine cases out of ten the sentence was successfully appealed against; and the tenth man probably suffered the extreme penalty as an "example," at times when there was a scare about the especial sin he was condemned for.

Unfortunately for Jack, the crime in which he had been taken red-handed was rife just then; and the public hot against that class of evil-doers.

The agony of suspense was consequently sharp enough; and Barnabas in his heart hoped that a juster judge than any earthly one would not hold the poor wretch guilty for the mad outbreaks that characterised this awful time of waiting for the result of the appeal. Surely no one had the right to inflict a six weeks' torture of uncertainty! He succeeded with much difficulty in getting Jack off an imprisonment in the dark cell. He felt convinced that the dark would drive the man out of his remaining senses. After that, he held himself accountable for Jack's vagaries, and very frequently managed to restrain them. The doctor, at the preacher's earnest entreaty, declared the culprit an "unfit subject" for solitary confinement in utter darkness.

"Though, mind you, he's an equally 'unfit subject' for association with his fellows in the light," he remarked to Barnabas. "They'd much better put him out of the world as soon and as quickly as possible. He's one of nature's mistakes, and you had better not have mercy on mistakes, Thorpe, as you ought to know." A piece of advice that had been given before, with equal want of effect!

The wardsman liked Barnabas none the better for this second interference; but it did not at first occur to the preacher that he was being purposely ill-treated when his food was scantier than it ought to have been, when his gruel was handed to him in a pail, instead of a basin, and when he was carefully excluded from a share of the fire.