Young and old, rich and poor, were standing there together, elbow to elbow. The shabby man, who acted as messenger—the aristocrat, moustached and habited in the latest fashion—the slatternly dressed woman, with a basket containing small purchases—and the fine lady, whose husband had settled a fortune upon her, but who was, himself, “in” for a few thousands, and whose carriage waited without the gate—the squalid child, the pampered boy, the virtuous and the vicious—were huddled together, forming no indifferent sample of the congregation gathered within the embrace of the high brick chevaux-de-frise crested walls.
The turnkey, who had been reading a newspaper with one eye and surveying his guests with the other, having found the collection of guests large enough, rose slowly up and opened the door. A crowd was waiting on the opposite side to come out.
As Hal, with his young and beautiful but shrinking companion, passed the turnkey, he inquired where he should find Mr. Wilton, and had to repeat his question before he could obtain a reply. At last, as the way was being stopped up because Hal, with the blood tingling in his forehead, refused to budge until he obtained his answer, the man said, in a low and surly tone—
“No. 5, in No. 10.”
Hal passed on and entered a long quadrangle, where he saw assembled some three or four hundred persons of all descriptions, many of them passing away their hours of confinement in the game of rackets.
An exclamation of surprise burst from both his lips and from Flora’s. Her visions of a damp, horrible dungeon were dissipated in a moment.
The day was cloudless, and as the sun streamed down among the hordes congregated together, bustling here and there, standing in groups, or engaged actively at rackets, laughing, shouting, or speaking in high tones, the scene appeared more like a community enjoying a festival day than a body of prisoners in confinement, visited by condoling friends.
Flora’s surprised eyes ran eagerly over the lively masses, thronging in groups, or moving rapidly to and fro, and she felt a great weight removed from her heart, although even her small stock of worldly knowledge told her that the aspect of the society she beheld gathered here was a shade shabbier, and a dash more slovenly than that met with “outside.”
Both she and her companion were slightly confused, but the latter, after a curious gaze at the motley multitude, turned his attention to the object with which he visited the place.
He saw upon the arched doorways leading to the prison chambers, a painted number upon the key-stone, and shrewdly guessed at the explanation of “No 5 in No. 10,” which had at first a little mystified him.