He had fully convinced himself, notwithstanding,

that his own proper share of the Fund was three and ninepence a week;

and that in this amount he, as an individual collegian, was swindled by

the marshal, regularly every Monday. Apparently, he helped to make the

bed, that he might not lose an opportunity of stating this case; after

which unloading of his mind, and after announcing (as it seemed he

always did, without anything coming of it) that he was going to write a

letter to the papers and show the marshal up, he fell into miscellaneous

conversation with the rest. It was evident from the general tone of the

whole party, that they had come to regard insolvency as the normal state

of mankind, and the payment of debts as a disease that occasionally

broke out. In this strange scene, and with these strange spectres

flitting about him, Arthur Clennam looked on at the preparations as if

they were part of a dream. Pending which, the long-initiated Tip, with

an awful enjoyment of the Snuggery's resources, pointed out the common

kitchen fire maintained by subscription of collegians, the boiler for

hot water supported in like manner, and other premises generally tending

to the deduction that the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise, was to

come to the Marshalsea.

The two tables put together in a corner, were, at length, converted into

a very fair bed; and the stranger was left to the Windsor chairs,

the presidential tribune, the beery atmosphere, sawdust, pipe-lights,

spittoons and repose. But the last item was long, long, long, in linking

itself to the rest. The novelty of the place, the coming upon it without

preparation, the sense of being locked up, the remembrance of that room

up-stairs, of the two brothers, and above all of the retiring childish

form, and the face in which he now saw years of insufficient food, if

not of want, kept him waking and unhappy.

Speculations, too, bearing the strangest relations towards the prison,

but always concerning the prison, ran like nightmares through his mind

while he lay awake. Whether coffins were kept ready for people who might

die there, where they were kept, how they were kept, where people who

died in the prison were buried, how they were taken out, what forms were

observed, whether an implacable creditor could arrest the dead? As to

escaping, what chances there were of escape? Whether a prisoner could

scale the walls with a cord and grapple, how he would descend upon

the other side? whether he could alight on a housetop, steal down a

staircase, let himself out at a door, and get lost in the crowd? As to

Fire in the prison, if one were to break out while he lay there?




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