Six Years in the Prisons of England | Page 4

to have been in mine) they could rank on my estate for about 7000l., when with less than 4000l. I could have settled the account. This, by the way, is what they ultimately did, and had my estate yielded the respectable dividend they expected, instead of losing even the 1000l. they promised to concede to me, they would have been gainers to that amount by the operation.
My transactions with this firm were in the position I have described when I started for the Continent with the view of opening my Paris business, and of winding up my previous unlucky partnership. This was the most successful journey I ever made. I visited Bremen, Hamburg, the interior of Germany, crossed through Switzerland to Lyons, where I appointed to meet my French traveller; visited with him all the large towns in France, and with my pocket-book full of valuable orders I found myself in London in less than four weeks from the time I left home. I arrived in London on a Wednesday, and telegraphed to the firm to which I have referred that I would call on them personally on the following Friday morning, to settle their claim and receive the bills they ought to have returned before. * * * On the Thursday evening, as I was preparing to leave the hotel for the railway station, I was suddenly and most unexpectedly arrested, and have not yet reached the spot I once loved to call my Home.
CHAPTER II.
MY FEELINGS ON FIRST ENTERING PRISON--TREATMENT AND EMPLOYMENT BEFORE TRIAL--MY TRIAL AND SENTENCE.
It is impossible to give the faintest idea of my state of mind on finding myself a prisoner. The circumstances of my arrest, while in the midst of my arrangements for a long night journey to Scotland, flushed with success beyond my most sanguine anticipations, and impatient to accomplish my freedom from a burden which had long oppressed me, and which had latterly threatened to utterly bear me down, gave an overwhelming force and severity to the shock. Indeed, the sudden and undreamt of change in my destination, the sharp and complete extinction of all my hopes and plans, stunned me for the time, and I felt it must be a hideous dream. I refused to credit the evidence of my senses: the detective's touch, which still burnt upon my arm; the words of arrest, which still rang in my ears; his actual presence by my side--were but "false creations of the mind." I continued to think, as I walked along in that strange company, that I must still be on my way to the railway station; that I saw the glare of the lights, and mingled in the bustle of the platform, when the dark outline of a London lock-up met my bewildered eyes. We entered its grim and silent gates, the cell door was closed behind me, the lock was turned, and I and the reality were left alone. About that dark cheerless cell, its cold bare walls, its grated windows, its massive door, there was to me an awful certainty.
In an access of astonishment and grief I threw myself on the solitary bench, for they had not sought to mock my misery with the presence of a bed, and as thoughts of my wife and friends came upon me, I covered my face with my hands and wept. How long that flood of hot and bitter tears continued I know not, but they partially relieved my almost bursting head. I arose, and in the darkness paced my prison floor. Even in these terrible hours hope did not utterly forsake me. The swift revolution of Fortune's wheel had indeed left me crushed and mangled in its track, but I was not actually ground to powder. As I became more familiar with the reality of my situation, I began to take a calmer and more hopeful view of the future. As morning dawned, I had almost persuaded myself that I had only to see the manager of the firm who held the bills, for uttering which I had been arrested, and make certain explanations and proposals, to regain my liberty. With impatience, therefore, I awaited the hour, which I knew must come, when I would be removed from London to Scotland; and when, at last, the detective who was to accompany me opened my cell door, I almost welcomed him as a friend. We booked at Euston Square Station for the place which I intended to have gone to, under such widely different circumstances, the previous evening. My guardian performed his duty during this long and painful journey with kindness and consideration, and did not propose to put handcuffs upon me.
Arrived at our destination, I was marched through the police and sheriffs office to the common prison, and, to my utter