Broad Street, Lyme.

F. DUNSTER

is now showing

A Variety of

EASTER CARDS AND BOOKLETS.

THE

QUEEN'S

Letter to

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Is.

BOOKS

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for LENT.

Devotional Books.

TEXT BOOKS.

CANON FLEMING'S SERMON Preached at Sandringham, and Published by Command.

No. 13.

THE GROVE.

MAY, 1892.

VOL. II.

MY SISTER CECILIA.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Few,

THROUGH the two great Experiences, Facts and Books, every Englishman is acquainted with prison life in its main features. perhaps it is a truth strange at once and significant-have not accompanied Mr. Booth and Dr. Primrose, except those whom circumstance has conducted thither in person. But the contrast with the scenes described by Genius in the last century is what in general strikes modern explorers and students in romance :- Silence now where we had expected the oaths of Wild, or the speeches of Robinson; the solitary cell for the Bedlam crowds of Hogarth; the eager attempt and appliances for reformation in place of the contagion irresistible by few except those already beyond further ruin. Yet (not to dwell on the fact that the difficulties and evils of prison-life are amongst those by their very nature perpetually reproduced,) the modern system has or had in some degree failed to penetrate gaols which like Chester, Norwich, or Newcastle, were originally constructed for defence, and in later times appear only conducive to picturesqueness. How often, when a boy, visiting the S. Alban's toy shops (there were two, Mrs. Gaunt's, the little one, and Hotchkin's, out of the market-place, where the genuine stamped cricket-bats were to be found), or later on the rare occasions of a county ball, had I admired this building for that picturesque character, without a thought of what arrangements within, a building

so constructed and so alienated from its original purpose, must necessitate! But after one glance at the small paved court and single hall-raftered room, the day-resorts for the wretched inhabitants, I was taken to a chamber within the portion added in far later times to the ancient gatehouse, and informed by the governor in words-brief from respect to my known county-position—that next morning the adjourned enquiry would be held, and I should therefore be removed for the day to Letchworth.

Meanwhile to obtain some knowledge of the cause of that suspicion which had deprived me of liberty at a moment so peculiarly adverse to restraint, and to communicate such knowledge with the least possible shock to those whom the mere intimation of the fact would affect so poignantly, were of course my almost only desires. My dear father must be spared; but two letters-to Robert for information, and O how much a severer task! how unspeakably! to Cecilia, were inevitable. By the Governor's kindness both were despatched on that evening: but occurrences stranger than any previous facts of this strange experience, deprived me of answer to one, and the other was next morning dispensed with Robert's own arrival to accompany me, on my return to Ardeley.

Long before sleep, however, a cause, obvious perhaps to everyone already (and like most obvious things, mainly the truth), for this arrest had suggested itself. If during the journey I had been able to think, so clear did the cause now seem, that my sole real regret, (so far as self was concerned), would have been the delayed journey; my sole real pain, the fear that some terrible crime had stained, perhaps for our recollections through life, the tranquil innocence of Ardeley. The character of the man Morden, his circumstances in relation to wife and child, his often-noticed personal likeness to myself, my own hasty departure, these were reasons which might be ample enough even to account for such suspicion as had fallen on me. Almost before his expression of tender and confident affection these reasons were given by Robert, and the Governor's long experience of the dreary ways of crime confirmed the explanation. It was with a curious union of personal deference and official suspicion that he superintended the details of my transference to the officer, (a man, I may here note, to whom I was quite unknown), who was to take charge of me to Sir J. Flamsteed's: "Bring the prisoner's register to the turnkey," and "May I trouble Mr.