Now
a score of prisoners ran to and fro, who had lost themselves in the
intricacies of the prison, and were so bewildered with the noise and
glare that they knew not where to turn or what to do, and still cried
out for help, as loudly as before. Anon some famished wretch whose theft
had been a loaf of bread, or scrap of butcher's meat, came skulking
past, barefooted--going slowly away because that jail, his house, was
burning; not because he had any other, or had friends to meet, or old
haunts to revisit, or any liberty to gain, but liberty to starve and
die. And then a knot of highwaymen went trooping by, conducted by the
friends they had among the crowd, who muffled their fetters as they went
along, with handkerchiefs and bands of hay, and wrapped them in coats
and cloaks, and gave them drink from bottles, and held it to their lips,
because of their handcuffs which there was no time to remove. All this,
and Heaven knows how much more, was done amidst a noise, a hurry, and
distraction, like nothing that we know of, even in our dreams; which
seemed for ever on the rise, and never to decrease for the space of a
single instant.
He was still looking down from his window upon these things, when a band
of men with torches, ladders, axes, and many kinds of weapons, poured
into the yard, and hammering at his door, inquired if there were any
prisoner within.
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