occupied by the most atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and
under sentence of death, are palaces. Let any one who doubts
this, compare the two.

The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key
grated in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had
been the innocent cause of all this disturbance.

'There is something in that boy's face,' said the old gentleman
to himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the
cover of the book, in a thoughtful manner; 'something that
touches and interests me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked
like--Bye the bye,' exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very
abruptly, and staring up into the sky, 'Bless my soul!--where
have I seen something like that look before?'

After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the
same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard;
and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's
eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had
hung for many years. 'No,' said the old gentleman, shaking his
head; 'it must be imagination.

He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and
it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed
them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many
that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the
crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were
now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and
closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still