That air of self-confidence which had tried the patience of the solicitor so extremely had vanished altogether from the manner of his youthful companion; for to Northcote’s horror, every phase of the defence which, with so much elaboration, he had already prepared, every word of the memorable speech to the jury which had been packed away sentence by sentence had passed away out of his consciousness so completely that it might never have been in it. Pressing through the crowded traffic with a vertigo assailing his eyes and his ears, and a paralysis upon his limbs, his mind was a blank which might never have been written upon. Pray heaven this would not be his condition when he rose to-morrow in the court; for what is comparable to the despair that overtakes an imperious nature when it is publicly abased by a physical failure? In imagination he was already sharing the sufferings of the young Demosthenes when derided by the populace. At last came the dread incident of the hansom stopping before the gateway of the prison. The portals rose mournfully through the twilight of the December morning. While the hansom stood waiting for them to revolve, a little company of loafers and errand-boys collected about the vehicle, and regarded its occupants with curiosity not unmingled with awe. “Lawyers,” said a denizen of the curb to a companion, whose world like his own was cut into two halves by the huge wall of the prison. “Ugly----!” said his friend, spitting with extraordinary vehemence upon the wheel of the vehicle. The huge door, studded with brass nails, swung back soundlessly upon its invisible hinges, and the hansom passed over cobbles under an archway that seemed to reverberate so much with the sound of its progress, that Northcote felt his brain to be shattered. He was unable to witness the little drama that was enacted behind him, of the great door shutting out the row of solemn faces, standing upon the dim threshold of the outer world to peer into the gloomy precincts of oblivion. The courtyard seemed to consist of low doorways with gas lamps burning within them, endless expanses of wall, windows heavily barred, and extremely official-looking police-constables. The little daylight of the streets through which they had passed had diminished sensibly. Mr. Whitcomb led the way out of the hansom as it stopped at a doorway at the end of the courtyard, slightly less insignificant than the rest. A policeman without his helmet, but with three stripes on the sleeve of his tunic, and whose hair, glossy with grease, fell over his low forehead in the form of a fringe, came out of the semi-darkness to receive them. “If you will take my card to the governor I shall be obliged to you,” said Mr. Whitcomb. “Yessir,” said the constable, with a deferential alacrity touched with a slightly abject humility. “Will you please to step this way, sir, and mind your ’at, sir, against the top of the door?”