CHAPTER V.

A FEARFUL PLACE.

The wapentake entered behind Gwynplaine.

Then the justice of the quorum.

Then the constables.

The wicket was closed.

The heavy door swung to, closing hermetically on the stone sills,

without any one seeing who had opened or shut it. It seemed as if the

bolts re-entered their sockets of their own act. Some of these

mechanisms, the inventions of ancient intimidation, still exist in old

prisons--doors of which you saw no doorkeeper. With them the entrance to

a prison becomes like the entrance to a tomb.

This wicket was the lower door of Southwark Jail.

There was nothing in the harsh and worm-eaten aspect of this prison to

soften its appropriate air of rigour.

588

The Man Who Laughs