Chapter 68
While Newgate was burning on the previous night, Barnaby and his
father, having been passed among the crowd from hand to hand, stood in
Smithfield, on the outskirts of the mob, gazing at the flames like men
who had been suddenly roused from sleep. Some moments elapsed before
they could distinctly remember where they were, or how they got
there; or recollected that while they were standing idle and listless
spectators of the fire, they had tools in their hands which had been
hurriedly given them that they might free themselves from their fetters.
Barnaby, heavily ironed as he was, if he had obeyed his first impulse,
or if he had been alone, would have made his way back to the side of
Hugh, who to his clouded intellect now shone forth with the new lustre
of being his preserver and truest friend. But his father's terror
of remaining in the streets, communicated itself to him when he
comprehended the full extent of his fears, and impressed him with the
same eagerness to fly to a place of safety.
In a corner of the market among the pens for cattle, Barnaby knelt down,
and pausing every now and then to pass his hand over his father's face,
or look up to him with a smile, knocked off his irons.
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