One young fellow there was who sat on the bench with hanging head. He had apparently no friends among the company. 'Here,' cried Jenny, 'is a lad half awake. What art doing here, friend?' The lad shook his head mournfully. 'Hast any money?' He shook his head again. Jenny pulled out a piece of silver. 'Go,' she said. 'Get food, and'--she whispered--'come back here no more. Go--get thee home again.' And so, let me believe, she saved one lad that night from the gallows. For he got up slowly and walked out. There was another lad also from the country whose fresh cheek and country dress betokened the fact. He sat sheepishly, as a new comer. Jenny stopped before him. 'And pray what do they call thee, Sirrah? Jack? 'Twill serve. What lay is it, Jack? Oh! Shop-lifting?' He nodded. 'For Mr. Merridew?' she whispered. He nodded again. 'Drink punch, Jack, and forget thyself awhile.' Some of the men were dressed like the Captain, but not so fine: the buttons had been cut off their coats and their shoes had lost the buckles. There were boys among them: boys who had none of the innocence of childhood; their faces betrayed a life of hunting and being hunted: they were always on the prowl for prey or were running away and hiding. They had all been whipped, held under the pump, thrown into ponds, clapped in prison. They were all doomed to be hanged. In their habits of drink as in their crimes, they were grown up. In truth there were no faces in the whole room which looked more hopeless than those of the boys. The women, of whom there were nearly as many as there were men, were either bedizened in tawdry finery or they were in rags: some wearing no more than a frock stiffened by the accumulation of years, black leather stays, and a kerchief for the neck with another for the head: their hair hung about their shoulders loose; and undressed: it was not unbecoming in the young, but in the older women it became what is called rats' tails. With most of the men, their dress was simple and scanty. Shirts were scarce: stockings without holes in them were rare: buttons had mostly vanished. Most of them, I observed further, had an anxious, hungry look: not the look of a creature of prey which has always in it something that is noble: but the look of one insufficiently fed. I believe that the ordinary lot of the rogue is, even on this earth, miserable beyond expression: uncertain as to food: cruelly hard in cold weather in the matter of raiment.