On arriving at the police station he was thrust into his cell without a word. He was thankful to find that it was empty, for he wanted to be alone with his thoughts. Selecting the darkest corner, he crouched down upon the floor and rested his head upon his knees. He could not weep, his grief was too great for tears. He could only think and think, until his thoughts seemed to scorch his very brain. And as he crouched thus, while the hours of that summer's afternoon and evening dragged slowly along, his whole life passed vividly before him, he seemed to live it all over again, and he asked himself if he could go back to the old life of hunger and cold in the streets.

When Nelly was with him, and they knew no other life, they were not unhappy. But he had had a glimpse of Paradise since then. He had tasted the joys of hope and had cherished dreams of a happy future, and he felt that it would be easier to die than to return in disgrace to what he had thought he had left behind him for ever.

It was very hard that just as the world seemed brightest, and hope seemed growing into certainty—just as the path of life was getting clear, and the end seemed certain, that he should be thus thrust down, and thrust down to a lower depth than he had known in his darkest days.

Could it be true, he asked himself again and again, that he, who had been trying so hard to be good and truthful and honest, was really in prison on a charge of theft? It had come upon him so suddenly that he thought sometimes it must be all some horrid dream, and that he would surely awake some time and find the bright future still before him.

And so the hours wore away, and the light faded in the little patch of sky that was visible through his high grated window, and the cell grew darker and more dismal all the while.

At length there was a tramp of feet in the courtyard outside. The key grated in the lock, the door flew open, and two lads were tumbled into the cell. These were followed in half an hour by three others, and Benny became aware by the noises in the courtyard that other cells were being filled as well as the one he occupied. And, as the darkness deepened, night grew hideous with shouts, and laughter, and songs, and curses loud and deep.

It seemed to him as if he had got to the very mouth of hell. Nothing that he had ever heard in Addler's Hall or Bowker's Row could at all compare with what he heard that night: now there was the sound of blows; now cries for help; now shrieks of murder, accompanied by volleys of oaths and shouts of laughter.