Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/129

Rh Five shillings happened to be his regulation price.

“No,” said Tom. “The fact is a solicitor is engaging counsel—”

“Then why the hell couldn’t you say so at first?” roared the other, in a drunken fury. “But lemme tell you five couters wouldn’t draw the brief as’d save your neck; no, nor yet five ’underd; nor all the lousy lawyers in the country. An’ I’ll trouble you for twopence for that glass o’ beer!”

Tom threw the coppers on the table and went out, followed by his own name hurled after him in loud derision; but the wardsman’s articulation was no longer intelligible, and the brute himself stopped where he was, and lay down upon the one bed in the room, which was his own.

This man was himself a prisoner, under sentence of two years for criminal conspiracy. Newgate contained no wretch more mercenary or more debauched. Yet the regulations of the time set such a one in authority, countenanced his iniquitous emoluments, and allowed him to spend them upon unlimited beer!

The madman was still wandering in the yard, crooning to himself in a high falsetto. His blue eye, happy and vacant as the clear evening sky, fixed Tom as he emerged, and set him envying the man who came to Newgate but left his wits outside. The pitch-and-toss pair had disappeared; in Number Ten the sounds of revelry were louder and more continuous than before; but that dejected figure, with the bent knees and the fallen chin, still sat outside in the damp. Tom’s compassion was aroused. He approached, and found a stripling with a white, damp skin, bony wrists, and fleshless knees.