"A few paces up the yard," he goes on, "and forming a continuation of the building, lie the condemned cells. The entrance is by a narrow and obscure staircase, leading to a dark passage, in which a charcoal stove casts a lurid light over the objects in its immediate vicinity, and diffuses something like a warmth around. Prior to the recorder's report being made, all the prisoners under the sentence of death are removed from the day room at five o'clock in the afternoon, and locked up in these cells, where they are allowed a candle until ten o'clock; and here they remain until seven the next morning. When the warrant for the prisoner's execution arrives, he is removed to the cells, and confined in one of them until he leaves it for the scaffold. He is at liberty to walk in the yard; but both in the walks and in his cell, he is constantly attended by a turnkey, who never leaves him on any pretence." The cell was "a stone dungeon eight feet long by six feet wide, with a bench at the upper end, under which were a common rug, a Bible and a prayer-book. An iron candle-stick was fixed into the wall at the side; and a small high window at the back admitted as much air and light as could struggle in between a double row of heavy, crossed iron bars." It was in one of these dens ("Oliver Twist," Chapter 52) that Fagin spent his last hours. "They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends, who crowded around a gate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to him; but, as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars; and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed. He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison. "Here he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there--alone. "He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for a seat and bedstead; and casting his bloodshot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After a while, he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said; though it seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word. These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more; so that in a little time he had the whole almost as it was delivered. To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead--that was the end. To be hanged by the neck till he was dead.