Black Bess; or, the Knight of the Road — page 80: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

this passes, for want of something better to do, he deter- mined to ez»lore. But as he «ode on he found that there was nothing at allremarxable in its appearance—nothing to repay kim for his trouble. He was about to turn back, when his eye happened to fail upon something glittering on the grouud neer his feet. : He stooped to pick it up, then examined it by the ligh of the lamp. T’o his surprise he saw it was a small portion of a gold chain that had evidently been broken with a great amount of violence. To one end of this chain depended a small locket of peculiar manufacture, and in which was the portrait of a young and beautiful girl. Dick gazed upon this portrait with very strange feel ings indeed, and no wonder. Ho had every reason to believe that the portion of Newgate he was now in had remained closed up and un- visited for nearly a hundred years. It would, then, b2 only natural for him to expect to find that this young gir! was attired in the costume of days long gone by. To his surprise, however—though the word is too weak to express the feeling he experienced—he perceived that her dress wasin every way modern—such, indeed, as was then almost universally worn. Well might such a discovery as this find food for Tur- pin’s thoughts. Indeed, simply to find a trinket of this description in such a place would be strange enough. But how came it there ? One thing he could not possibly resist, and that was, that it had fallen there lately. Who, then, he asked himself, had traversed those passages beside himself—those passages which he fancied had been untrodden for so long ? This was a question to which, of course, he could re- turn ne reply, and so, with a vacant, absent air, he con- tinued to turn the locket and chain over and over, and every now and then would pause to gaze upon the sweet, innocent face that had been painted there. Rousing himself at length from his reflectiens, Dick carefully consigned the locket to his pocket, thea, trim- ming the lamp, he held it aloft so that its light should be well diffused, and looked around him in all directions with uncommon closeness and eagerness. Nothing, however, met hi gaze, but the strong, damp, stone walls and the little doorways which at frequent intervals broke in upon their evenness. “This is strange indeed,” he muttered, as he took a step forward, ‘but it will be an odd thing to me if I don’t come to some definite conclusion respecting it.” =e CHAPTER DCCCLXXXIX. IN WHICH DICK TURPIN HAS SOME FURTHER ADYENTURES IN THE CORRIDORS OF OLD HEWGATE. ConTINUING to look around him thus closely, Dick Tur- pin slightly advanced until, having gone about half-a- dozen paces, he found the character of the place he was in altogether changed. The passage abruptly terminated in a large, peculiarly- shaped chamber, and which, after a brief examination, he concluded must at some time or other have served asa vestibule, Doors could be seen opening from it, and passages branching off similar to the one from which he had just emerged. The roof of this chamber gradually got higher towards the centre, and, having paused as nearly as he could tell in the middle, Dick held up the lamp and endeavoured to ascertain its height. This, however, he was not able to do, for overhead he could see nothing but a huge biack patch. - Looking down again upon tbe ground, thinking por- haps to find some other fragment of the broxen chain, he suddenly started A strange expression swept over his face, and he seemed inclined to turn aside. But changing his disposition, he stooped down The rays of the lamp then fell upon an object well cal- BLACK BEEB ; ‘ — > J P OR, Sues to make the senses of the boldest sicken wha orror. | On the ground was alarge spot of blood seareely dry yet in some places, but evidently fast soaking into aad mingling with the damp earth. Marvelling more and more at what he saw, end feeliug now fearfully anxious to unravel the whole mystery, Dick. keeping the lamp close to the ground, tried to trace the blood close to another spot. But in this he failed completely. There was no clue to it whatever. But before him was a passage which seemed to iavite him to enter it—at any rate, he strode quickly forward and commenced an exploration of it. Less than ten strides brought him to the termination of it. His further progress was barred by a dorx. This door was old, worm-eaten, and scemed as though it would only require aslight touch to pushit from its frame. On the side upon which Turpin stood, it was secured by bars and bolts, and these, after some deliberation with himself, and after listening for awhile and finding all silent, Dick ventured to remove. Pressing gently against the door, he found it opened to his touch. Beyond all was darkness. He listened again. But, reassured by the silence, crossed the threshold. How great was his wonder to find himself in what he firmly believed from its appearance to be the cellar of a house. In this he might have been mistaken, but soon all his ~ doubts and surmises were set at rest, for going to the foot of a flight of steps that led down into it, he stood and heard distinctly the sound of voices above. The tones were quite unfamiliar to him, and he was quite certain that it was none of the turnkeys of Newgate he heard conversing, besides, a woman’s voice mingled with the others. The light he earried with him prevented him from ob- serving earlier what now came under his notice, which was that there was a small grating in one portion of the wall, through which a few gieams of light made their way. Pissing the lamp aside, he went close up to this grating, and peered through it. In front was a small square, recess-like-looking place, at the top of which he could distinguish another grating, lying in a horizontal position. Now, however, that he had reached this place, he re- ceived additionai confirmation of his idea, for he could hear the sound of many footsteps hurrying by above, as well as the rumbling of wheels and the trampling of horses’ feet. Clearly, then, he was somewhere near a street, and be- yond all doubt he was in the cellar of a house which must mysteriously and strangely have a communication with Newgate. Retracing his footsteps, Dick closed the door, amd ex- amined it. The fastenings were all upon the prison .%de of the door, and he felt certain that very many years had elapsed since these fastenings had been removed. his blew to the winds the hypothesis that he had already raised in his mind to account for the discoveries ne had made. If the fastenings had been removable by anyone in the cellar, the solution to the whole mystery would have been easy; but he felt perfectly confident that it would be utterly impossible for anyone to pass from the cellar into the prison without resorting to the violent means of breaking down the door. This palpably had never been dong, so he was sow quite as much in the dark as ever. Replacing the bars, and pushing the boks into their rusty sockets, he retraced his steps into the Jarge cham- ber. Again he endeavoured to ascervain the height of the roof, but the lamp now burne?, much more dimly than before, so that he met with ‘no suceess—indeed, the con- dition of tke light alarmed him a little, and upen examina- tion he found that only & small quantity of oil remetued jn the reservoir made te contain it. z ze | <COMICDOOKS €O