"It was remarkable that these cries began in that quarter of the gaol which fronted Newgate street, where it was well known that the men who were to suffer death on Thursday were confined. And not only were these four, who had a short time to live, the first to whom the dread of being burnt occurred, but they were, throughout, the most importunate of all; for they could be plainly heard, notwithstanding the great thickness of the walls, crying that the wind set that way, and that the flames would shortly reach them; and calling to officers of the gaol to come and quench the fire from a cistern which was in their yard, and full of water. Judging from what the crowds from without the walls could hear from time to time, these four doomed wretches never ceased to call for help; and that with as much distraction, and in as great a frenzy of attachment to existence, as though each had an honored, happy life before him, instead of eight-and-forty hours of miserable imprisonment, and then a violent and shameful death. "But the anguish and suffering of the two sons of one of these men, when they heard, or fancied they heard, their father's voice, is past description. After wringing their hands, and rushing to and fro as if they were stark mad, one mounted on the shoulders of his brother, and tried to clamber up the face of the high wall, guarded at the top with spikes and points of iron. And when he fell among the crowd he was not deterred by his bruises, but mounted up again, and fell again, and when he found the feat impossible began to beat the stones and tear them with his hands, as if he could in that way make a breach in the strong building and force a passage in. At last they cleft their way among the mob about the door, though many men, a dozen times their match, had tried in vain to do so, and were seen in, yes in, the fire, striving to pry it down with crowbars. "Nor were they alone affected by the outcry from within the prison. The women who were looking on shrieked loudly, beat their hands together, stopped their ears and many fainted; the men who were not near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing, tore up the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and fury that could not have been surpassed if that had been their gaol and they were near their object. Not one living creature in the throng was for an instant still. The whole great mass were mad. "A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why or what it meant. But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield and drop from its topmost hinge. It hung on that side but by one, but it was upright still, because of the bar and its having sunk of its own weight into the heap of ashes at its foot. There was now a gap at the top of the doorway through which could be descried a gloomy passage, cavernous and dark. Pile up the fire!