Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/134

114 school, at college, in the stable-yard at home, his language had been more than free at times, and never studiously considered. This is stated as a fact, not a merit. Tom was not without refinement, but his spiritual armour was full of joints, or this his ruin had never come about. To-night, however, he first tossed on his mat—then clenched his fists and sprang up in the dark—but lay down again, recollecting his own footing in that foul place—and finally dug his thumbs in his ears and remained supine and ashamed. Hitherto he had held that he knew everything and could stand much. He altered his opinion in Number Ten Ward of the Chapel Yard at Newgate.

At last they tired of their talk and began to snore. Tom was himself dropping off when the poor fellow at his side woke up groaning.

“The sweat!—the sweat!” he whimpered. “Now I’ll have to lie in it, cold, till morning.”

“That you won’t,” said Tom, cheerily. He bad taken the next mat to the pickpocket’s from no unmixed sense of duty. The tragedy of this poor ebbing life had come with incredibly grateful effect between his own mind and his own woes. Besides, there was a fellow-feeling: they were both unquestionably cast for death; the only question was as to which would go first. So Tom was glad to have this comrade in hopeless case; he was thankful for the very glow it gave him to do what he could.

He stripped his companion, he stripped himself, and, by a moon-ray breaking obliquely through grimy glass and iron bars, he got the sufferer into his own dry things. Tom then lay down, half-naked, between the rugs supplied with each mat; having first tucked up his charge with all the care and gentleness he could command.