Into the Highways and Hedges

by F. F. Montrésor

When he did discover that these paltry revenges were constant and unremitting, and likely to continue, unless he paid the ward dues, he took no notice of them. There was, certainly, a strong vein of the family obstinacy in Barnabas, and he wasn't going to "give in" to an illegal extortion simply because he was rather colder, hungrier, and more uncomfortable than need be.

The worst days of Newgate, when a gaoler could actually torture or flog a rebellious prisoner, were happily past, and he had too much sturdy pride to complain to the authorities of such mean and petty indignities as he endured, but they probably affected his broken health; and that November was bitterly cold.

He had never in his life before suffered from weather; but he suffered terribly now, both by day and night. The rugs that covered the men were never washed, and he had resolved to prefer comparative cleanliness and cold to unmitigated dirt, and was very angry with his own softness for feeling the frost, "like a woman". Indeed, in his ordinary health it would have done him no harm; but, unfortunately, his bones had not recovered from the violent handling they had received, and he lay awake pretty constantly with racking rheumatic pains in them, and began to stoop like a man of sixty.

At last, towards the end of the month, his turn came.

The case had roused wide interest, both actors in it having already, in widely different ways, made a certain amount of sensation in London. The court was full, and the crowd outside dense.

More than one glance was directed curiously at the preacher's wife, who stood among the spectators, and was quite unconscious of criticism or interest, whether kindly or adverse. Margaret stood between Tom Thorpe and Dr. Merrill; but her whole attention was concentrated on Barnabas. This sea of upturned faces was nothing to her.

George Sauls, looking over the heads of the crowd, caught a glimpse of her, and bit his lip with a sensation of sharp pain, and of something very like envy. He would almost have exchanged places with the prisoner, if by so doing he could make that one woman look at him thus with all her soul in her eyes. That which he could not have, that which would never be his, seemed to him at that moment to loom large and clear, to be the only reality in a world of shadows. He told himself that he was mad, quite mad, and that it was lucky for him that his madness could take no effect. He told himself that this woman was only like other women; that even if her heart could be turned to him by some magic, if he could give all his ambitions and all his wealth in exchange for her, he would wake, when his dream should be over, and regret the bargain. He told himself that he knew what this was made of; that he had been "in love" before now. But the odd part of it was that he did not know.

If the wickedness of our own hearts sometimes takes us by surprise, so, I think, does their goodness. Mr. Sauls had a constitutional dislike to mysteries, and preferred thinking about what he could understand; but there were elements in his love for Meg which would astonish him yet.

Meanwhile, this story that the counsel for the prosecution was telling was not a particularly pleasant one for Mrs. Thorpe to hear; though it was absolutely necessary that it should be told. George Sauls' expression grew stolid and impenetrable as he listened. He was already low in her estimation. Very well: she should have the satisfaction of knowing that her estimate was right, and he would have the satisfaction of seeing Barnabas Thorpe hang.

The counsel dwelt on the enmity that had existed between the prosecutor and the prisoner,—an enmity that he described as being, on the prisoner's side, passionate and unrestrained, and almost bordering on monomania. He should call two witnesses to the fact of Barnabas Thorpe's having already attempted Mr. Sauls' life fifteen years before this last outrage. He spoke of that scene in the churchyard where not even the presence of death had availed to quell the prisoner's mad passion.