I entered on my new and felonious functions forthwith. Resistance was useless, and calling for help would have been sheer insanity. It was midnight; and, even supposing the windows had not been barred, the house was a mile from any human habitation. Accordingly, I abandoned myself to fate with my usual magnanimity. Only let me end in winning Alicia, and I am resigned to the loss of whatever small shreds and patches of respectability still hang about me—such was my philosophy. I wish I could have taken higher moral ground with equally consoling results to my own feelings.
The same regard for the well-being of society which led me to abstain from entering into particulars on the subject of Old Master-making, when I was apprenticed to Mr. Ishmael Pickup, now commands me to be equally discreet on the kindred subject of Half-Crown-making, under the auspices of Old File, Young File, Mill, and Screw.
Let me merely record that I was a kind of machine in the hands of these four skilled workmen. I moved from room to room, and from process to process, the creature of their directing eyes and guiding hands. I cut myself, I burned myself, I got speechless from fatigue, and giddy from want of sleep. In short, the sun of the new day was high in the heavens before it was necessary to disturb Doctor Dulcifer. It had absolutely taken me almost as long to manufacture a half-a-crown feloniously as it takes a respectable man to make it honestly. This is saying a great deal; but it is literally true for all that.
Looking quite fresh and rosy after his night’s sleep, the doctor inspected my coin with the air of a schoolmaster examining a little boy’s exercise; then handed it to Old File to put the finished touches and correct the mistakes. It was afterward returned to me. My own hand placed it in one of the rouleaux of false half-crowns; and my own hand also directed the spurious coin, when it had been safely packed up, to a certain London dealer who was to be on the lookout for it by the next night’s mail. That done, my initiation was so far complete.
“I have sent for your luggage, and paid your bill at the inn,” said the doctor; “of course in your name. You are now to enjoy the hospitality that I could not extend to you before. A room upstairs has been prepared for you. You are not exactly in a state of confinement; but, until your studies are completed, I think you had better not interrupt them by going out.”
“A prisoner!” I exclaimed aghast.
“Prisoner is a hard word,” answered the doctor. “Let us say, a guest under surveillance.”
“Do you seriously mean that you intend to keep me shut up in this part of the house, at your will and pleasure?” I inquired, my heart sinking lower and lower at every word I spoke.
“It is very spacious and airy,” said the doctor; “as for the lower part of the house, you would find no company there, so you can’t want to go to it.”
“No company!” I repeated faintly.