e enough
to admit the body of a man, and then came dropping down upon the floor,
one after another, until the cell was full. They caught him up among
them, handed him to the window, and those who stood upon the ladders
passed him down upon the pavement of the yard. Then the rest came out,
one after another, and bidding him fly and lose no time, or the way
would be choked up, hurried away to rescue others.

It seemed not a minute's work from first to last. He staggered to his
feet, incredulous of what had happened, when the yard was filled again,
and a crowd rushed on, hurrying Barnaby among them. In another
minute--not so much: another minute! the same instant, with no lapse or
interval between!--he and his son were being passed from hand to hand,
through the dense crowd in the street, and were glancing backward at a
burning pile which some one said was Newgate....

When he [the hangman] had issued his instructions relative to every
other part of the building, and the mob were dispersed from end to end,
and busy at their work, he took a bundle of keys from a kind of cupboard
in the wall, and going by a private passage near the chapel (it joined
the governor's house, and was then on fire), betook himself to the
condemned cells, which were a series of small, strong, dismal rooms,
opening on a low gallery, guarded at the end at which he entered by a
strong iron wicket, and at its opposite extremity by two doors and a
thick grate. Having double-locked the wicket and assured himself that
the other entrances were well secured, he sat down on a bench in the
gallery and sucked the head of his stick with an air of the utmost
complacency, tranquillity, and contentment.

It would have been strange enough, a man's enjoying himself in this
quiet manner while the prison was burning and such a tumult was cleaving
the air, though he had been outside the walls. But here in the very
heart of the building, and moreover, with the prayers and cries of the
four men under sentence sounding in his ears, and their hands, stretched
out through the gratings in their cell doors, clasped in frantic
entreaty before his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable. Indeed,
Mr. Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to banter
himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do when
they are in a waggish humor, sucked the head of his stick with a higher
relish, and smiled as though he would say:--"Dennis, you're a rum do