The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 323: what you’re looking at

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

CHAPTER XXXII THE MURDERESS It was night — deep midnight; the iron tongue of Time had just proclaimed it from St. Sepulchre’s tower, and when Mrs. Brace, in her solitary cell, had done counting twelve, the awful silence which followed seemed more profound, more dreadful, more solemn than it was before. The wretched woman felt as if she were engulfed in a more than Egyptian darkness, and entombed in a more than sepulchral silence; a tremendous consternation was upon her as she sat in the Newgate cell. Horrible thoughts were passing slowly through her brain, — thoughts that peopled the intense gloom with ghastly objects and ever and anon evoked whispering voices from the depths of the very silence itself. | The night was so dark that not the feeblest glimmering could penetrate into her dungeon. She was therefore im- mured as it were in a pitchy blackness which could almost be felt; and the massive walls of solid masonry beat back all sounds from without, rendering the interior of that cell as still as if it were a stone vault embedded a hundred feet below the surface of the earth. If there were orgies, or riot- ing, Or weeping, or praying going on in other parts of the spacious establishment, not the faintest murmur thereof was borne to the ears of the wretched woman in her own cell; no noise, either of revelry or lamentation, could pene- trate the immense wall which stood between herself and the companionship of the various felons’ wards; nought could she hear, save the ominous loud-toned booming of St. Sepulchre’s bell as it proclaimed the hours. It was the middle of the night succeeding the day of so many and varied incidents, — that day, too, on which the 293 ECORNICHOOKS. E@ ee . , —— Pl, ae _~ Te. he Oe fee, yy SSL ee Pee oe ee nik oes... ® “7"* ja =e ~ ~~ > Ls Fo «=e =