It was by the gate of punishment that Gwynplaine had been taken into prison.  The lane, as we have said, was nothing but a little passage, paved with flints, confined between two opposite walls.  There is one of the same kind at Brussels called Rue d’une Personne.  The walls were unequal in height.  The high one was the prison; the low one, the cemetery—­the enclosure for the mortuary remains of the jail—­was not higher than the ordinary stature of a man.  In it was a gate almost opposite the prison wicket.  The dead had only to cross the street; the cemetery was but twenty paces from the jail.  On the high wall was affixed a gallows; on the low one was sculptured a Death’s head.  Neither of these walls made its opposite neighbour more cheerful.

CHAPTER VI.

THE KIND OF MAGISTRACY UNDER THE WIGS OF FORMER DAYS.

Any one observing at that moment the other side of the prison—­its facade—­would have perceived the high street of Southwark, and might have remarked, stationed before the monumental and official entrance to the jail, a travelling carriage, recognized as such by its imperial.  A few idlers surrounded the carriage.  On it was a coat of arms, and a personage had been seen to descend from it and enter the prison.  “Probably a magistrate,” conjectured the crowd.  Many of the English magistrates were noble, and almost all had the right of bearing arms.  In France blazon and robe were almost contradictory terms.  The Duke Saint-Simon says, in speaking of magistrates, “people of that class.”  In England a gentleman was not despised for being a judge.

There are travelling magistrates in England; they are called judges of circuit, and nothing was easier than to recognize the carriage as the vehicle of a judge on circuit.  That which was less comprehensible was, that the supposed magistrate got down, not from the carriage itself, but from the box, a place which is not habitually occupied by the owner.  Another unusual thing.  People travelled at that period in England in two ways—­by coach, at the rate of a shilling for five miles; and by post, paying three half-pence per mile, and twopence to the postillion after each stage.  A private carriage, whose owner desired to travel by relays, paid as many shillings per horse per mile as the horseman paid pence.  The carriage drawn up before the jail in Southwark had four horses and two postillions, which displayed princely state.  Finally, that which excited and disconcerted conjectures to the utmost was the circumstance that the carriage was sedulously shut up.  The blinds of the windows were closed up.  The glasses in front were darkened by blinds; every opening by which the eye might have penetrated was masked.  From without, nothing within could be seen, and most likely from within, nothing could be seen outside.  However, it did not seem probable that there was any one in the carriage.

Southwark being in Surrey, the prison was within the jurisdiction of the sheriff of the county.