Here the door of the manager's room was opened, and out strode Solomon Coe, with a look of cruel triumph on his harsh features. "That's your man, right enough," said he. "He'd wheedle the devil, if once you let him talk. Be off with him!" The next moment Richard's wrists were seized, and he was hurried out between two men--his late acquaintance of the hotel and a policeman--down the bank steps, and into a fly that stood there in waiting. "To the County Jail!" cried Solomon, as he entered the vehicle after them. Then he turned to the red-whiskered man, and inquired fiercely, why he hadn't put the darbies on the scoundrel. "Never you mind that," was the sharp reply. "I'm responsible for the young gentleman's safe-keeping, and that's enough." "Young gentleman! I am sure the young gentleman ought to be much obliged to you," replied Solomon, contemptuously. "Young felon, you mean." "Nobody's a felon until after trial and conviction," observed the little man, decisively. "Let's have no misunderstanding and no obligation, Mr. Coe; that's my motto." Here the wheels began to rumble, and a shadow fell over the vehicle and those it held: they were passing under the archway of the jail. CHAPTER XXII. LEAVING THE WORLD. What wondrous and surpassing change may be in store for us when the soul and body have parted company none can guess; but of all the changes of which man has experience in this world, there is probably none so great and overwhelming as that which he undergoes when, for the first time, he passes the material barrier that separates guilt from innocence, and finds himself in the clutches of the criminal law. To be no longer a free man is a position which only one who has lost his freedom is able to realize; the shock, of course, is greater or less according to his antecedents. The habitual breaker of the law is aware that sooner or later to the "stone jug" he must come; his friends have been there, and laughed and joked about it, as Eton boys who have been "swished" make merry with the block and rod, and affect to despise them; the situation is, in idea at least, familiar to him; yet even he, perhaps, feels a sinking of the heart when the door of the prison-cell clangs upon him for the first time, and shuts him from the world. The common liberty to go where we will is estimated, while we have it, at nothing; but, once denied, it becomes the most precious boon in life. How infinitely more poignant, then, must be the feelings of one thus unhappily circumstanced, to whom the idea of such a catastrophe has never occurred; who has always looked upon the law from the vantage-ground of a good social position, and acquiesced in its working with complacence, as in something which could have no personal relation to himself!