only putting out his hand for a fee; and in my joy, perhaps, I gave him
one imprudently large. After passing this gate, the distant uproar of
the debtors guided us to the scene of their merriment; and when there,
such was the tumult and the vast multitude assembled, that we now hoped
in good earnest to accomplish our purpose without accident. Just at
this moment the jailer appeared in the distance; he seemed looking
towards us, and at length one of our party could distinguish that he
was beckoning to us. We went forward, and found him in some agitation,
real or counterfeit. He muttered a word or two quite unintelligible
about the man at the wicket, told us we must wait a while, and he would
then see what could be done for us. We were beginning to demur, and to
express the suspicions which now too seriously arose, when he, seeing,
or affecting to see some object of alarm, pushed us with a hurried
movement into a cell opening upon the part of the gallery at which we
were now standing. Not knowing whether we really might not be
retreating from some danger, we could do no otherwise than comply with
his signals; but we were troubled at finding ourselves immediately
locked in from the outside, and thus apparently all our motions had
only sufficed to exchange one prison for another.

We were now completely in the dark, and found, by a hard breathing from
one corner of the little dormitory, that it was not unoccupied. Having
taken care to provide ourselves separately with means for striking a
light, we soon had more than one torch burning. The brilliant light
falling upon the eyes of a man who lay stretched on the iron bedstead,
woke him. It proved to be my friend the under-jailer, Ratcliffe, but no
longer holding any office in the prison. He sprang up, and a rapid
explanation took place. He had become a prisoner for debt; and on this
evening, after having caroused through the day with some friends from
the country, had retired at an early hour to sleep away his