e, and bent upon the rescue of
a child or brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under
sentence of death, and who was to be executed along with three others,
on the next day but one. There was a great party of boys whose fellow
pickpockets were in the prison; and at the skirts of all, a score of
miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to release some other
fallen creature as miserable as themselves, or moved by a general
sympathy perhaps--God knows--with all who were without hope and
wretched.

Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives,
axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butchers' shops; a forest of
iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each
carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches; tow smeared
with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from fence
and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars in the
streets, composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and Dennis, with
Simon Tappertit between them, led the way. Roaring and chafing like an
angry sea, the crowd pressed after them.

Instead of going straight down Holborn to the jail, as all expected,
their leaders took the way to Clerkenwell, and pouring down a quiet
street, halted before a locksmith's house--the Golden Key....

The locksmith was taken to the head of the crowd, and required to walk
between his two conductors; the whole body was put in rapid motion; and
without any shouting or noise they bore down straight on Newgate and
halted in a dense mass before the prison gate.

Breaking the silence they had hitherto preserved, they raised a great
cry as soon as they were ranged before the jail, and demanded to speak
with the governor. Their visit was not wholly unexpected, for his house,
which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket-gate of
the prison was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person
to be seen. Before they had repeated their summons many times, a man
appeared upon the roof of the governor's house, and asked what it was
they wanted.

Some said one thing, some another, and some only groaned and hissed. It
being now nearly dark, and the house high, many persons in the throng
were not aware that any one had come to answer them, and continued their
clamor until the intelligence was gradually diffused through the whole
concourse. Ten minutes or more elapsed before any one voice could be
heard with