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 The room she entered was densely filled with smoke. She
obtained the object of her search. She remembered no more.
When again consciousness returned to her, she was in the arms of
Hal, high in the air, upon a dreadful slope, the ruddy glare of the
roaring flames making visible to her the frightful danger of her
position. She relapsed into insensibility, and when once more she
opened her eyes, she found herself in bed, the motherly face of an
elderly woman bending over her, and her wrist in the hand of a
white-haired medical attendant, who had himself applied the
restoratives which had brought her back to life.
A thousand questions thronged to her lips, first wonder, then
incoherence, then, with an awakening sense of what had happened,
her desolate destitute condition burst with full force upon her, and
she fell into a passionate fit of weeping.
The soft, kindly voice of the woman at her side was addressed to
her in soothing tones, while the strictest injunctions fell from the lips
of the doctor, forbidding speech on either side. He recommended
Flora to commend herself to God, and then endeavour to sleep,
under the conviction that the fearful event in which she had borne
so prominent a part had not involved any loss of life.
Poor Flora! she had no words at command, no language in which
to express the emotions the horrors of the night had occasioned,
and she obeyed the doctor’s behest of silence simply because her
tongue refused its office.
She listened to the exhortations addressed to her, and made a
feeble motion to the effect that she would endeavour to comply with
the wishes that had been expressed: and so she was left alone.
Where was she?
She cast her weeping eyes around; but, in the well-furnished
room, recognised no object that could enlighten her upon that point.
By the aid of the light of the candle, which had been left burning
upon a table, she could distinguish everything in the room plainly
enough, but there was nothing to tell her whose house she was
within.
But she had a surmise. Women, quick at assumption, are rarely far
wrong in their suppositions.
Flora, when she opened her eyes to find herself at a dizzy height
above the uproar of the excited multitude assembled to witness the
destruction of the dwelling by the remorseless fire, saw, too, that
she was in the firm grasp of Harry Vivian. She remembered that
now; and she was led to believe, therefore, that she had been
conveyed by him to the house of his uncle, and that the kind and
tender matron who had spoken to her such words of tenderness was
his aunt.
Her lip quivered as the thought passed through her mind, and
when—following the counsel of the doctor, no less than the dictates
of her own pure mind—she offered up a prayer of thankfulness to
the Throne of Grace for her escape, she invoked a blessing upon the
head of him who had perilled so much to accomplish the work of her
deliverance.
It has been said that it is seldom a woman disposes of her own
heart—circumstances decide for her. One thing is certain—that she
does not long remain in ignorance when her heart has been made
captive. A man may for some time believe and assure himself that
he only admires and esteems some very pretty girl: an accident will,
however, disclose to him that he loves her. This is not the case with
woman: a man upon whom she casts at first an indifferent eye may
possess attractions which, gradually gaining her good will, ultimately
win her affections; but her heart will no sooner be his than she
becomes cognizant of the fact, and she takes her position
accordingly.
Flora had been present many times when Hal Vivian had visited
her father upon business. She had been irresistibly struck by his
handsome face and well-formed figure, his pleasant expression of
countenance, and his mild, courteous manner; but, if she had then
thought of him at all, it was to consider him as an amiable young
man—bearing the palm, perhaps, from every other she had as yet
seen—nothing more.
Now, as she sought to close her eyes in sleep, she saw vividly his
face, the bright red glow of the fire glaring upon it; she saw his
glittering eye, his contracted brow, his inflated nostril, and
compressed lip, the collective symbols of brave energy; she saw,
too, that the contour was handsome and noble—with an almost
painful distinctness she perceived that the daring effort of courage,
which then so brilliantly animated his fine face, was solely made to
save her from a dreadful death.
While giving him full credit for the very noblest impulse, she had
not been true to her woman’s nature if she had not instinctively felt
that his arduous exertions received an impetus from some
favourable impression she had created upon him.
Indefinite, unacknowledged as this conception, in her agitated
state, really was, it was not without its influence in composing her to
slumber.
Her dead mother’s pale face seemed to look down upon her from
its place in heaven, gently and placidly. Her father’s countenance,
quivering with an agonised anxiety of expression, disturbed and
sorrowful, oppressed her, but the features of Hal floated before her
vision, appearing to grow brighter and brighter in her eyes, and to
suggest a hopeful and happy future.
It was broad daylight when she awoke. She turned her pained
eyes around her, and beheld at her side again that same kind,
motherly face which had been the first she looked upon the night
before, when recovering from insensibility. She was greeted with
kind words as on the previous occasion, and was permitted this time
not only to recur mentally to the sad event of the night before, but
to obtain some control over her natural emotions before a question
was put to her, which called upon her to utter a word. During this
interval, she learned that all her surmises had been founded on a
true basis; that she was indebted to Hal Vivian for an almost
miraculous escape from a dreadful death, and that she had been
received and sheltered beneath the roof of Mr. Harper, where she
was assured that she was welcome to remain until some
arrangements for her comfort and convenience could be made.
Further, Flora was given to understand that the good Samaritan
before her was Mrs. Harper, who, though she had servants in the
house, believed that her own ministrations to the suffering girl would
be attended with more beneficial results than if she had delegated
the task to others.
Mrs. Harper was a truly generous, kind-hearted woman, and her
efforts to serve others had, at least, the gratifying effect of
rewarding herself, for hitherto she had been so fortunate as not to
misplace them, or throw them away on unworthy objects. Her doves
of pity and goodwill had always brought her back an olive branch,
and if they had not, it is doubtful whether she would have ceased to
render those services which came so opportunely, and were so
grateful to whoever needed them.
When Flora could command herself to speak, she, in warm and
eloquent terms, expressed her deep and earnest gratitude for that
self-sacrificing bravery which the nephew of Mrs. Harper had
exhibited in the behalf of herself, and to the goodness and charity of
the old lady, who, in her distress, had granted her so valuable an
asylum.
“Don’t speak of it, my child,” returned Mrs. Harper. “For my part, I
wish my hospitality had been afforded to you under happier
circumstances. And as for Hal, Heaven bless us! I thought I should
have died when I saw him crawling with you up the roof of that
horrible old house over the way. I’m sure I never expected to see
you come down alive, either of you, and, in truth, I don’t believe you
would if it hadn’t been for those bold firemen, who, mercy on us!
were up in the flames, moving about like a parcel of demons in the
fiery regions in the play!”
Flora clasped her hands, and said sorrowfully—
“This perilling of life for me, and I can in no way repay it.”
“Tut, tut, my dear,” returned Mrs. Harper, “don’t think about that—
these men are paid for their work; it is their duty, and they are used
to it.”
“But Mr. Vivian?” suggested Flora.
“Just what I said, my dear,” observed Mrs. Harper, garrulously.
“Hal is neither paid for nor used to such work, but when I said so,
he closed my mouth with a kiss, and vowed that it was his duty that
he had performed, and if it was to do again he would not hesitate
one minute to go through all he did last night.”
“He is so noble!” said Flora, with the faintest of sighs.
“Poor fellow!” ejaculated Mrs. Harper. “He looks rather jaded this
morning, and so odd with his whiskers and eyebrows singed with the
fierce fire. Ah! it was a dreadful sight.”
“Dreadful!” exclaimed Flora, with a shudder.
“Yes, and he was so eager to know how you were,” continued Mrs.
Harper, “Dear me, what a many questions he asked me about you.
Ah! well, I told him you should yourself reply to him bye and bye.”
Flora was conscious of a rosy hue stealing into her cheek. She
thought of his deep, earnest eyes, and how steadfastly they would
after the late event settle upon hers, and how she would never be
able to meet his, though she had at other times and recently done
so without even a passing thought upon the matter.
Why was this? She sighed—perhaps she guessed.
 It was some two or three days before she was enabled to grant an
interview to Hal, anxious as she was for the meeting. All her clothes
had been consumed by the fire, and Mrs. Harper’s dresses were “a
world too wide” for her.
Flora was not affected on the point of dress. She had no
unnecessary or false pride in that respect, but she had the natural
regard to external appearance, which every woman, young or old,
unless utterly lost, possesses; and, though she was not truly
cognisant of the influence a tasteful arrangement of well-fashioned
garments would have in heightening charms already of a very
superior order, she had no desire to present herself to Harry Vivian
disguised in a dress sufficiently capacious for Mrs. Harper, but in no
degree contract-able to her dimensions.
With most generous spirit and charming willingness, the old lady
put the powers of her draper and her dressmaker into active
requisition, and Flora was able to quit her room in the time
mentioned.
She rapidly recovered her health and a certain serenity of mind.
The loss of all her father’s little property, buried among the charred
ruins opposite, was an evil to be regretted, but it was a fact which
no grief could disturb or obviate. A remedy was to be sought—
something was to be done for herself, probably for her father too,
who, an inmate of a prison, was scarcely likely to be able to help
himself; and from the moment she came to recognise and
comprehend her position, her mind busied itself in forming plans for
the future, by which she should at least be able to support him who
had no one now in the wide, wide world to look up to but herself.
She was hopeful and sanguine, but she knew very little of the
world.
Old Mr. Harper knew a very great deal about it, plain and matter-
of-fact as he appeared. He had for some time past determined to
have a country house at Islington—in fact, had decided upon it, and
was slowly having it furnished. He pushed on the work now; for,
after a very grave consultation with Mrs. Harper, his wife, he decided
that the poor girl, bereaved of home by fire, and of a father by the
law, could not turn out into the streets. So, looking upon her as a
trust confided to his care by the Almighty, he resolved to take charge
of her, house, feed, and clothe her, until something was done in her
behalf by such persons as had a better title to perform the good
work than himself.
Thus, at the end of a week, he calculated upon entering his new
house at Highbury, which he should leave in the morning and return
to at night, accompanied by his nephew, and he resolved that Flora
Wilton should become an inmate as well as those who constituted
his family. He absolutely chuckled to think what a delightful
companion she would make his wife, who, having lived so long in
the old house in Clerkenwell, would find the solitude of her new
home, without such society as that now ready for her, absolutely
insupportable.
Mr. Harper confided to Hal the task of imparting to Flora his
intentions.
“She owes you something for the service you afforded her in
escaping,” said the old goldsmith, “and so if she raises any foolish
objection, the prompting of a reluctance to become burdensome, or
any such stuff as that—for she is just the sort of girl to show a great
deal of pride, you know—you will be able to combat her arguments
and reason her out of it.”
Hal’s face lighted up as though a sunbeam had made it radiant.
What happiness to have her dwelling at his home, her eyes to
greet him when he returned at night, and follow him when he
departed in the morning, her sweet-toned voice to welcome him and
to speed him on his way, her delicious presence to smoothe down
the fatigues of his daily labour, and to wile away imperceptibly hours
which otherwise might drag their slow length tediously along.
 Harry Vivian, overflowing with Mr. Harper’s instructions and his
own emotions of delight, one morning by arrangement entered the
room in which Flora was seated alone, and advanced towards her
shyly and slowly.
Flora, who, as the door opened, turned her gaze upon it as though
she

Knew whose gentle hand was on the latch,

Ere the door had given him to her eyes,

as he made his way into the apartment, rose up. The colour fled
from her cheek, and she was seized with such a sudden and violent
palpitation of the heart that she was forced back into her chair
again. She trembled all over. Then her cheek flushed, and she felt
once more impelled to rise and hurry towards him to grasp his hand,
and pour forth a torrent of eloquent gratefulness. The emotion
which she experienced was new and strange to her; her every nerve
thrilled rather with a sense of pleasure rather than with any other
feeling.
She was confused, dizzy. But withal, an overpowering gladness
reigned within her soul that he and she were once more face to
face.
Ay, they were palm to palm, too. At first without a word. What
could they say? their hearts were too full for utterance; both
remembered how together they had trembled on the verge of
eternity, and there was a deep solemnity in the thought, which, for
the moment, forbade speech.
Flora was the first—wonderful gift pertaining to woman—to
recover her self-possession. In words, low toned, but earnest and
heartfelt, she expressed her sense of the obligation she owed him,
and though he, recovering, too, his speech, would have stayed her,
she was not to be so checked, but gave utterance to all her full heart
dictated.
“For my own life I am your debtor. I am sensible what I owe to
you on that account,” she observed, with much feeling, “and I can
never, never discharge the obligation; nay, perhaps I would not if I
could, for indeed, Mr. Vivian, after the brave and noble conduct you
have displayed, it affords me a gratification I have no words to
describe, to know that I shall henceforward be attached to you by
ties of gratitude which no adverse circumstances can ever sunder.”
Why did she suddenly turn so crimson, and look affrighted at the
words which she herself had uttered? Was it that Hal’s eye danced
with joy, or that he raised her hand to his lips, and pressed it with
them?
Well, it matters not; her eye fell upon the ground, and her hand
remained within his; she did not offer to withdraw it, though he had
kissed it softly and tenderly it is true, but not without a little
empressement—if ever so little.
He had not seen her frightened look, but her words had made his
heart leap, and but that he had the proposition of his uncle to make,
it is not impossible that he would have responded to them by
confessing that her attachment, however ardent, was fully
reciprocated by him. As it was, he restrained himself.
“My dear Miss Wilton,” he said, in a somewhat tremulous tone, “do
not over-rate my services; I was excited by the occurrence, and
acted upon an impulse.”
“A noble one, Mr. Vivian.”
“But not uncommon. Thousands would have done as I have done,
had they similar opportunities, and I should have exerted myself
equally had you been an entire stranger to me.”
“That I believe,” said Flora, innocently and praise-fully.
 “That is to say,” continued Hal, correcting himself, for he did not
quite like her to entertain that belief, “my impression is that I should.
I must acknowledge, Miss Wilton, that knowing you, as I have had
the honour of doing for some time, I had an additional incentive to
endeavour to snatch you from an awful death. I very much
congratulate myself that I succeeded, and I pray you to believe that
you cannot be more overjoyed at my good fortune than myself.
Thank God, you are safe, and I hope almost recovered from the
fright. We will let the past go, and cast an eye upon the future.”
“I have already done so,” interposed Flora.
“I do not dispute it, my dear Miss Wilton,” returned he, speaking
quietly yet firmly, as though to drown all opposition; “but my uncle
has been beforehand with you. He is a man of the world, and knows
much; he is a wealthy man, too, Miss Wilton, and can well afford to
be kind, considerate, and generous. He is quite alive to the very
embarrassing position in which the late sad disaster has placed you,
and he is anxious that you should not experience its inconvenience
during the interval which must elapse between any arrangements
you may be able to make hereafter for your future course. He has
laid out his plans, with which you are connected; he confesses that
they are not without a little selfishness in them, but he is wishful
that you should overlook that, and not offer any opposition to the
proposal he has empowered me to make to you.”
He, then, in the most delicate words he was able to employ, laid
before her his uncle’s plan, and begged her to assent to it.
To have refused, under present circumstances, would have been
simply a preposterous absurdity; she had no such notion, but she
felt this additional kindness most acutely.
She remained silent, because she felt that she should sob as she
spoke, if she attempted to give utterance to her feelings. She turned
her large eyes, suffused in tears, upon him—he was easily able to
read their language.
 With instinctive delicacy, desirous of sparing her further distress
from painful recollections, he terminated the interview here.
In a rejoiced spirit he interpreted her look of overflowing gratitude
as an acceptance of his uncle’s liberal offer, and he once more
pressed her unreluctant hand, as, relieving her of any necessity for
speaking, he informed her that he should convey to his kind-hearted
relative her judicious decision upon the matter.
If he were not in love now, it is more than doubtful if ever he
could be.
During the period which had elapsed between the rescue and the
present moment, Flora had not, for an instant, forgotten her father.
The expression of dire misery which pervaded his features, when
he parted from her in custody of Messrs. Jukes and Sudds, remained
present to her as vividly as though it had been photographed upon
her vision. It haunted her, and added greatly to the sad impression
with which the recent occurrences and several afflicting events had
clouded her young life in the years immediately past.
She wished so much to see her father again, to be with him, to
minister to his wants and to his comforts, to both of which, she felt
assured, he had no one to attend, and must, therefore, be plunged
into a state of despairing wretchedness.
In accepting the offer of Mr. Harper, she saw—in no selfish or
narrow-minded spirit, that she would, in her present dreadful strait,
be at least provided with a home, until some means were obtained
to place her where she would be no longer a burden to Mr. Harper,
and she had not, therefore, hesitated thankfully to fall in with the
arrangement proposed.
Yet she desired to be the companion and loving attendant upon
her father in prison.
In prison!
 How that dreadful word rang in her ears!
She had but a vague notion of that receptacle for vice, dishonesty,
and misfortune. She had no clear perception of the difference
between the debtor’s and the criminal’s place of incarceration. To her
it was one huge black building, frowning and grim in its aspect
without; all cells, chains, and torture within.
To some such a place she believed her father to have been borne.
She shrank not to share his captivity She had a sense that the air
would be foul, stifling, pestiferous, and the cell wanting the light of
day. She pictured four black, mildewed walls, a straw bed, always
damp with slime and dank with humid earth, a small wretched table,
a pitcher of water, and a lump of dark, noisome bread. She had
heard of such places. There might be some alleviation where the
crime was only inability to pay, but a prison was still a prison, and
hopeful as she might be that his condition was not so bad, yet she
could see it in no other light.
To Mrs. Harper she revealed her wishes, but that good lady not
only had a difficulty in believing in its practicability, but even in its
propriety.
Mr. Harper was consulted, and he hastened to set Flora right.
“Do not suppose,” he said, “Miss Wilton, that I have overlooked
the situation of your father—common humanity would have
forbidden that. I made it my duty to send to him, as early as the
gates of the establishment where he is detained were open, on the
morning after the fire, to let him know that the sad disaster had
happened, but that his child was safe in my charge. I further caused
him to be informed that as soon as you were able to leave your
chamber, you would go to him, and explain all that I was unable to
communicate.”
“Oh, sir! let me go to him at once,” cried Flora eagerly.
“If you feel strong enough, certainly,” replied Mr. Harper.
 “Oh, sir! I am quite strong enough, quite—indeed I am. I so long
to see him; I have so much, so very much to say to him.”
“Be it so; Hal shall accompany you to protect you. You cannot go
alone.”
“No?”
“No! it would not be well to do so. Through the agency of some
unknown friend, a writ of habeas corpus has been obtained, and
your father has been removed from Whitecross Street to the Queen’s
Prison—all of which you do not understand. However, there he is,
and the place is one of which you can have no conception. The
assemblage there is large, mixed, and not scrupulous in its
behaviour. You would be bewildered without some one to make
inquiries for you, and be, perhaps, rudely assailed by the
unreflecting or the callous and the impertinent. Yes; Hal shall go
with you, and you will, believe me, find the prison somewhat
different to the picture you have sketched in your imagination.”
Flora listened in silence, and acquiesced in the arrangement, not
that the disagreeable part of it would be the society of Hal—nay, she
would have gone with Jukes rather than not have gone at all,
malicious ogre as she considered him—but she would have preferred
to have gone alone.
She felt an intuitive reluctance that Hal, whom she so much
esteemed, and whom, therefore, she would have wished to have
seen her relatives in their best light, should visit her father in a
prison, and that the visit should be paid with her.
But inexorable circumstances compelling, she set out with him,
her small hand resting upon his arm, and making him feel a far
wealthier and happier potentate than any monarch that ever reigned
upon earth.
 CHAPTER VIII.—THE PRISON.
There’s a divinity doth shape our ends,
Rough hew them how we will.
—Hamlet.

W
hen they together reached the lodge, or gate, as it is
called, of the Queen’s Prison, Hal and Flora gazed with
surprise on the motley group waiting for the door to be
unlocked, that they might enter to see those confined within.
A sallow faced, black-haired turnkey, who seemed all eyes, was
what is called “on the lock,” and he “took stock” of every individual
about to pass into the prison with a sharp scrutiny, and with a
rapidity which told that this had been for years his daily practice.
Young and old, rich and poor, were standing there together, elbow
to elbow. The shabby man, who acted as messenger—the aristocrat,
moustached and habited in the latest fashion—the slatternly dressed
woman, with a basket containing small purchases—and the fine lady,
whose husband had settled a fortune upon her, but who was,
himself, “in” for a few thousands, and whose carriage waited without
the gate—the squalid child, the pampered boy, the virtuous and the
vicious—were huddled together, forming no indifferent sample of the
congregation gathered within the embrace of the high brick
chevaux-de-frise crested walls.
The turnkey, who had been reading a newspaper with one eye
and surveying his guests with the other, having found the collection
of guests large enough, rose slowly up and opened the door. A
crowd was waiting on the opposite side to come out.
 As Hal, with his young and beautiful but shrinking companion,
passed the turnkey, he inquired where he should find Mr. Wilton, and
had to repeat his question before he could obtain a reply. At last, as
the way was being stopped up because Hal, with the blood tingling
in his forehead, refused to budge until he obtained his answer, the
man said, in a low and surly tone—
“No. 5, in No. 10.”
Hal passed on and entered a long quadrangle, where he saw
assembled some three or four hundred persons of all descriptions,
many of them passing away their hours of confinement in the game
of rackets.
An exclamation of surprise burst from both his lips and from
Flora’s. Her visions of a damp, horrible dungeon were dissipated in a
moment.
The day was cloudless, and as the sun streamed down among the
hordes congregated together, bustling here and there, standing in
groups, or engaged actively at rackets, laughing, shouting, or
speaking in high tones, the scene appeared more like a community
enjoying a festival day than a body of prisoners in confinement,
visited by condoling friends.
Flora’s surprised eyes ran eagerly over the lively masses,
thronging in groups, or moving rapidly to and fro, and she felt a
great weight removed from her heart, although even her small stock
of worldly knowledge told her that the aspect of the society she
beheld gathered here was a shade shabbier, and a dash more
slovenly than that met with “outside.”
Both she and her companion were slightly confused, but the latter,
after a curious gaze at the motley multitude, turned his attention to
the object with which he visited the place.
He saw upon the arched doorways leading to the prison
chambers, a painted number upon the key-stone, and shrewdly
guessed at the explanation of “No 5 in No. 10,” which had at first a
little mystified him.
Before he could advance many paces, an experienced eye picked
him out as an “outsider” and a visitor. A dingy tattered man—sallow
with long confinement, and the pressure of an enduring poverty,
which had, as he who gave it as a toast, said, stuck by him long
after his friends had deserted him—touched Hal on the elbow.
“Stranger here, I see,” he observed, as the young man turned
sharply around; “come to see a friend, I presume. If you will honour
me with the name of the gentleman residing here, I will conduct you
straight to his room. If you don’t find him there, I’ll search for him
among the players—sure to find him—one of the conveniences of
this establishment is, that the friend you call to see is never far from
his hutch—‘not at home’ is not known in our vocabulary.”
Hal saw that the information was to be purchased at an arbitrary
gift. He felt that a guide was unnecessary, as the information he had
received from the turnkey, though not at first clear, was plain
enough now. Yet there was something in the careworn aspect of the
man’s features—in the wistful, anxious expression of his eye—telling
of the strong hope he had now before him of obtaining a breakfast;
so that Hal, who had breakfasted heartily, could not find it in his
heart to disappoint his expectations; and, after a perusal of the poor
fellow’s face, and a hasty glance at his threadbare attire, he said—
“I want to see a Mr. Wilton. Do you know where he is—situated?”
Hal had almost said, confined, but he arrested the word ere it left
his lips.
“Wilton, Wilton,” repeated the man; “he is a new comer, eh?”
“He is,” replied Hal.
“Ah!” returned the man, “then he is either 2 in 8, or 7 in 4, or”——
“I can save you the trouble of speculating by telling you”——
 “5 in 10,” interrupted the man; “that is the only other room which
has been recently occupied. The lawyers—you a lawyer, sir?”
Hal laughed freely.
“No,” he answered, “I am not a lawyer.”
“Glad to hear it. The precious rastals! they have been driving a
roaring trade lately. Ah, sir! what a glorious country this would have
been without lawyers! No writs, no executions, no imprisonment for
debt. By Jove! what a splendid state of things.”
The man shut his eyes to enjoy the ecstacy he felt even in
imagining such an Utopia.
“For swindlers no doubt!” observed Hal, with a smile; “but lawyers
are essentially necessary to prevent honest men being devoured by
rogues.”
“Very true, sir; that is one side of the question. If they confined
themselves to that line, they would be a valuable body of
professionals, but unfortunately they do not. You are too young and
too inexperienced to know that they are much more the rogue’s
friend than the honest man’s counsellor and servant.”
Hal shook his head.
“Ah! you don’t know. I hope you may never have occasion to
know. I do; God knows I do. I have been here eighteen years, sir.
Never in all that time beyond the door through which you entered
this pandemonium. The lawyers brought me here, and here I am
likely to die.”
“But can’t you take the Benefit”——
“Of the Act. No! I am here for contempt of court—a contempt of
which I am intentionally as innocent as you are—a contempt about
which I knew nothing—yet the rascally lawyers clapped me in here
for it, and here I have been ever since, because I am not able to
purge my contempt, as they call it. Besides, if it were not for
contempt that I am here, I couldn’t take the Benefit, for I am
connected with a large property, and I don’t intend to let the villains
have that simply because I should, like a bird, be glad to get out of
my cage. However, sir, you want to see Mr. Wilton, and not to listen
to my doleful history. Come along, sir, this way.”
He shuffled onward as he spoke, and Hal prepared to follow him.
As he did so, he caught sight of a man within three feet of him,
fastening a stare of passionate admiration upon Flora’s sweet face.
His gaze was impudent only so far as that it was fixed and
steadfast He had caught sight of her countenance and had stopped
short, as though he had been transfixed suddenly to the ground.
He was about forty years of age, evidently a gentleman, probably
a military man, for his carriage was remarkably erect, and his upper
lip—though that nowadays is no symbol of the profession of arms—
was garnished with a thin, black moustache, long at the ends, and
having the appearance of being perpetually manipulated by the
finger and thumb of either hand.
His complexion was very dark, bearing evidence of having for
years been exposed to the tender mercies of an Indian sun. His eyes
were a brilliant jet and unusually large; they flashed as he moved
them; his hair, which was short, was black, as were his whiskers,
which were thin and polished, curling at the edges with a uniformity
that spoke of irons.
His attire was plain and dark, but that of a gentleman.
He was evidently one in no common position. Hal ran his eye
scrutinisingly over him, and then turned a side glance at Flora,
whose face he perceived to be flushed, and its expression that of
one distressed at being thus rudely stared out of countenance.
Of course, with the instincts of his youth, he felt convulsed with a
jealous rage, and burned to commit himself in some wrathful and
violent way.
As Flora was nearest to the stranger, and must have touched him
as she passed, Hal moved her by an easy act. Setting his shoulder
firm, he increased his pace, as if to follow the messenger, and came
into sharp collision with the gentleman, who had not yet removed
his eyes from the face of Flora.
The effect of the concussion was to thrust him back some two or
three feet, while Hal passed on apparently unmoved.
Another minute, and the latter felt his shoulder rudely seized. He
wheeled round instanter. The man he had pushed out of his path
was at his side, his features distorted with rage.
“Unmannerly cub!” he cried, “how dare you thrust yourself against
me?”
“You are quite able to frame the explanation if you require one,
and to comprehend my refusal to make any apology,” returned Hal,
with calmness. “Let me also counsel you not to repeat the offence of
which you have been guilty, or the consequences, as now, may not
terminate in a simple collision.”
He moved on, as the excited individual exclaimed—
“But for that fair creature on your arm, I would have caned you
soundly, you insolent puppy.”
Hal’s lip curled contemptuously; he refrained from replying to the
threat, and left the man to resent his conduct in any shape he
pleased.
They were now before the open dooorway, No. 10, and followed
the messenger up the worn stone steps that looked as though water
was to them a fable and grease their daily food.
By the aid of the iron banisters and Hal’s arm, Flora, with beating
heart, reached the second flight, and saw the messenger who had
preceded them halting in the stone corridor before a door.
Upon it was painted the figure 5.
This, then, was 5, in 10, and within the room which that painted
door guarded, was her father, a prisoner.
Still there was no grim turnkey, no dripping walls, no dark
dungeon—though Heaven knows the vaulted passages lighted by
small, arched, iron-grated windows, looked dreary enough.
“This is the place,” said the messenger, “the room where Mr.
Wilton is staying; and with better luck than I have. Ah, sir, my
friends have all died, or wandered away long ago, and I, without
them, or help of any kind, have been obliged to declare myself on
the County. That means, sir, that I am supplied with a room and a
scanty allowance of food by the authorities, but not a farthing in
money, sir, not a farthing. You see before you, sir, a wretch who has
not a farthing, nor any means of obtaining one, save through the
charity of kind persons like yourself, who reward me with a trifle for
conducting them to their friends.”
Hal put his hand into his waistcoat pocket and drew forth half-a-
crown. The usual reward was about twopence. Sometimes, by the
tough-skinned, a penny was doled out, or a profitless, “Thank you,”
but half-a-crown—that was unhoped-for munificence. With economy,
how long would it supply him with tobacco and beer?
The man’s eye glistened as a ray of light fell upon the coin. It was
one of the last new dies, and was bright as from the Mint.
“What a beautiful piece of silver!” he exclaimed, with a grin of
satisfaction. “Well, you are a gentleman! When you come again, sir,
ask for me—my name is Maybee: everybody here knows Josh
Maybee, anything I can do for you in the prison I will: out of it, you
know, is not at present in my line. God bless you, sir! good day—oh!
stay, you had better knock and see whether Mr. Wilton is in his
room. If not, I’ll run into the ground, and hunt him up.”
 Flora tapped gently at the door, but there was no response. She
turned the handle of the lock gently, and opened it a little way. She
looked into the apartment with a throbbing heart.
Upon a bed she saw seated her father—the very picture of
desolation and woe. His head was bowed almost to his knees, and
his two hands were spread open over his forehead. He seemed
unconscious of everything but the intense anguish under the
influence of which his body was swaying to and fro.
Flora ran into the room: she sank upon her knees at his feet: she
drew gently his hands from before his eyes, and twined her arms
about him with a sweet tenderness.
“Father, dear father!” she said, “look up: see, your own Flo’ has
come to you—to be with you—to share your prison—to tend you,
and to be a comfort to you as she was at home. Look at me—speak
to me, father dear.”
With a startled cry, the old man looked up, as if suddenly roused
out of a dream of gloom and horror into a paradise of sunshine.
He caught Flora’s soft cheeks between his withered hands, and
gazed upon her young, bright, lovely face with an expression of
passionate joy lighting up his wrinkled, pallid, grief-furrowed
features.
“Flo’!” he cried, hysterically, “Flo’! Flo’! my—my Flo’, not dead, not
consumed! my own Flo, not lost to me for ever! Oh, beneficent
Creator! I can bear all now: my sorrows are assuaged. Come what
come may, I care not, for my child is spared to me. To my heart, my
darling!”
The old man drew her to his breast, and pressed her convulsively
there, sobbing, as he did so, like a child. Hal, with water glittering in
his eyes, turned his face from them, and looked out upon the
bustling noisy groups in the racket ground beneath.
 Shabby Josh Maybee made an effort to clear his throat, as if he
had swallowed a cobweb, and felt that, in spite of all his economic
resolutions, at least twopence of the half-crown would instantly be
melted into beer.
He darted away down the stone staircase, two steps at a time,
with the practised agility of one who had descended them many
hundred times. As soon as Flora could disengage herself from her
father’s embrace, she drew his attention to Hal, who had all the time
modestly remained close to the threshold of the door. In glowing
terms she related to him the part which he had played in the
dreadful fire, the origin of which was a mystery. She told him of the
desperate hazard he had incurred in his efforts to save her life, and
she also related to him what had since occurred. Old Wilton, with
tears in his eyes, thanked him:—
“Mr. Vivian,” he said feebly, “the day may be distant, but I have
faith that it will come, when I shall in some degree be able to repay
you for the past: not that salvation of a life can ever be meetly
rewarded, but something in the direction may be achieved—some
service may be needed by you, and it may be in my power to render
it; it will show, at least, the spirit of my gratefulness towards you.
Mr. Vivian, I have not always been the abject wretch you now see
me; I may not continue to be such. Ah! my God!” he cried, putting
his hands to his forehead, as though smitten with sudden agony, and
then, turning to his astonished daughter, who was regarding him
with an affrighted look, he said, in a tone of unutterable anguish
—“everything was hopelessly, utterly destroyed in that dreadful fire.”
She clasped her hands, bowed her head, and replied, sorrowfully
—
“Alas! everything!”
He groaned bitterly.
“The fire was so sudden and so violent,” observed Hal, gently,
“even those who escaped had hardly time to save themselves in
their night dresses—opportunity was barely afforded for that.”
The old man rose up, and paced the room, murmuring, in accents
of acute misery—
“All gone, all gone, the long cherished hope of years—the one link
which, through all my misery, has bound me to life. Everything has
perished—my long, long sustained hopefulness is swept from me,
and henceforth there is nothing left but misery and despair!”
“Father, dear father, do not give way to such gloomy fears,” cried
Flora, tenderly caressing him.
“A cloud has long hung over our house; it is at its darkest now,
but it will disperse and pass away.”
“Never! never!” cried the old man, hoarsely. “In that dread fire, all
our expectations—all the possibilities of restoring them, are
consumed; we might have been wealthy in the time to come, now
we must be beggars for ever.”
“Your sorrows overpower your better reason, Mr. Wilton,”
exclaimed Hal, pained to see the acute grief of the old man, and the
sharp tears of anguish coursing down the cheeks of Flora, whom he
seemed to love more deeply and fervently each time his eye traced
the exquisite beauty of her features.
Old Wilton turned to him.
“You know not the extent of my loss, Mr. Vivian,” he said, almost
sharply, “you cannot, therefore, measure the depth of my grief.”
Then, addressing his daughter, he said—“Ah! my child, I am to
blame that I did not confide to you the true value of that document
which I charged you to guard with your life. Had I done so you
would”——
“I have saved that packet,” cried Flora, eagerly interrupting him. “I
returned for it at the last moment, and I should have died when I
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