The chief scene of these disgusting orgies,—the cellar, just referred to,—was a large low-roofed vault, about four feet below the level of the street, perfectly dark, unless when illumined by a roaring fire, and candles stuck in pyramidal lumps of clay, with a range of butts and barrels at one end, and benches and tables at the other, where the prisoners, debtors, and malefactors male and female, assembled as long as their money lasted, and consumed the time in drinking, smoking, and gaming with cards and dice. When any violent outrage was committed,—and such matters were of daily, sometimes hourly, occurrence,—a bell, the rope of which descended into the hall, brought the whole of the turnkeys to their assistance. Buried under various ancestral sixteenths, smothered under modern thought, liberty of action and bewildering variety of flesh-pots, it was still alive to the extent that it needed only his present state to resuscitate it in all its peculiar force. That shining slope of snow, and how we talked of death! We might have died! Even when we are old, when we are rich as we may be, we won’t forget the tune when we cared nothing for anything but the joy of one another, when we risked everything for one another, when all the wrappings and coverings seemed to have fallen from life and left it light and fire. The only inconvenience I feel from my shattered noddle is an incapacity to drink. It was denied him, for as he closed his eyes—though but for an instant—the whole scene of his former visit to the place rose before him. He entered the room with his usual deliberation, and looked covertly about him. "I'm a peace-officer," he added, "about to arrest a notorious criminal. "A vow," she answered,—"a vow to my dead husband. Ramage admitted the force of that. Although she had refused to answer his impertinent questions.
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