Calling the name of the solicitor, Northcote broke away abruptly from the prisoner and left the room. It had seemed to be charged with a pestilence. Mr. Whitcomb was soon at his side, and hastily they wended their way up and down various flights of stone steps, along the noisome corridors of the huge building, until daylight came in sight once more through the doorway at the end of the passage at which their cab was standing. Their relief was very real at being able to breathe again the living air, fog-laden as it was.
“I don’t know how many times,” said Mr. Whitcomb, as they drove from the portals of the jail, “on one errand and another, I have descended into this inferno, but it never loses its power to give me the blues.”
“I am regretting,” said Northcote, “that I did not take your advice. I wish I had not come near it. I cannot shake off the impression it has made. Ugh! it gets into one’s blood. I don’t know anything quite so overpowering as the nausea of locality.”
“You are too impressionable, my son,” said the solicitor, with a furtive smile. “You will never be able to get through life at this rate. It wants one of some hardihood, one who is robust in each one of his five senses, to practise law.”
“I would say,” Northcote rejoined, with a shudder, “that to be armed for this calling each particular nerve he has got in his body must be shod with iron.”
The solicitor laughed at so palpable a discomposure.
“What did you make of the prisoner?” he asked, suddenly. “You appeared to find a great deal to say to one another.”
“Personally I hardly spoke a word to her,” said the young man, seeking to gather his recollection of that strange interview.
“She appeared to find a good deal to say to you,” said the solicitor. “In that respect you have been more fortunate than myself. I have spoken with her three times, and I don’t think I have been able to extract three words from her. Do you mind telling me what she said?”
“To the best of my remembrance she said nothing that could have the least interest for anybody.”