‘Debber saw bib in all by life. S’elp be as true as by ’air’s growig,’ returned the prize-fighter.
‘He says he saw you at Newgate.’
‘I was there,’ answered the prize-fighter, pursing up his leathery under-lip.
‘Observe him well and try to recollect if he was a prisoner?’
‘Dot in by tibe,’ said the prize-fighter.
This insinuation, after what I had said, enraged me. ‘You know I never was a prisoner, sir,’ I cried. ‘You are acting inhumanly in trying to confirm your hopes, but not your suspicions, that I was one. I was on a visit to the jail for my entertainment. My companion and I were conducted to the prisoners’ visiting-room. There I saw Mr. Barney Abram in conversation with a stout, dark lady, gaily attired, and I looked at him with attention because he was pointed out to me as the greatest prize-fighter of the age, and that is why I mentioned his name when you asked me whether I knew any of the convicts on board.’
A savage glow of pleasure brightened the prize-fighter’s eye as he listened; my audacious address, my reference to the brute’s fame, acted upon his spirits like a can of drink. The sentry eyed me askant; the warder with a satisfaction which his flat, ruffianly face could not conceal.
‘You saw be talking to by wife,’ said Barney Abram!—‘a stout, splendid woban, ’adsobly dressed as you put it, sir. The circumstance is all correct.’
‘You can go below,’ said the doctor.
I received a fierce, exulting, congratulatory glance from the bruiser as he turned about in his shackles to re-enter the door. He might have meant to applaud me for my fearless speech, or, which is more likely, he might have meant to wish me luck in the scheme which had brought me into conflict with the surgeon, and which he would naturally hope and believe was criminal.