ce, hoarse as it is with hunger,--and ask yourself who could pledge
himself for such misery?"

He uttered some commonplaces--at least so they sounded to me--about
there being no necessary connection between want and crime; but I
stopped him short, saying,--

"Then you have never fasted, sir,--never known what it was to struggle
against the terrible temptations that arise in a famished heart; to sink
down upon a bed of straw, and think of the thousands at that moment in
affluence, and think of them with hate! No link between want and
crime! None, for they are one. Want is envy--want is malice. Its evil
counsellors are everywhere,--in the plash of the wave at midnight; in
the rustle of the leaves in a dark wood; in the chamber of the sick man:
wherever guilt can come, a whispering voice will say, 'Be there!'"

Some friendly bystander here counselled me to calm myself, and not
aggravate my position by words of angry impatience. The air of sympathy
touched me, and I said no more.

I was committed to prison--remanded, I believe they said--to be called
up at some future day, when further inquiries had been made into my mode
of life and habits. The sentence--so well as I could understand it--was
not a severe one,--imprisonment without labor or any other penalty. I
was told that I had reason to be grateful! but gratitude was then at a
low ebb within me; for whatever moralists may say, it is an emotion that
never thrives on misery. As I was led away, I overheard some comments
that were passed upon me. One called me mad, and pitied me; another
said I was a practised impostor, far too leniently dealt with; a third
classed me with the vile herd of those who live by secret crimes, and
hoped for some stringent act against such criminals.

There was not one to ask, Why has he done this thing? and how shall
others be saved from his example?

They who followed me with looks of contempt and aversion never guessed
that the prison was to me a grateful home; that if the strong door shut
out liberty, it excluded starvation too; and that if I could not stray
at will through the green lanes, yet my footsteps never bore me to the
darksome pond where the black depth whispered--oblivion!

CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE STREETS

I was liberated from prison at the end of eight days. I begged hard to
be allowed to remain there, but was not permitted. This interval, short
as it was, had done much to recruit my strength and rally my faculties;
it