The arrangements were soon made. There being no time to send for Marlow's own carriage and horses, it was agreed that he should take a carriage belonging to Mr. Hastings, with his horses, for the first stage; the prisoner's valet was to accompany his friend, and immediate orders were given for the necessary preparations.
When all was ready, Emily asked some question of her father, in a low tone, to which he replied, "On no account, my child. I will send for you and your mother should need be; but do not stir before I do. This is a mere cloud--a passing shower, which will soon be gone, and leave the sky as bright as ever. We do not live in an age when kings of England can play at foot-ball with the heads of innocent men, and I, as you all know, am innocent."
He then embraced his wife and child with more tenderness than he was wont to show, and entering the carriage first, was followed by the messenger. The other men mounted their horses, and Marlow did not linger long behind the sad cavalcade.
Philip Hastings had calculated much upon his Roman firmness; and he could have borne death, or any great and sudden calamity, with fortitude; but small evils often affect us more than great ones. He knew not what it is to suffer long imprisonment, to undergo the wearing, grinding process of life within a prison's walls. He knew not the effect of long suspense either, of the fretful impatience for some turn in our fate, of the dull monotony of long continued expectation and protracted disappointment, of the creeping on of leaden despair, which craves nothing in the end but some change, be it for better or for worse.
They took him to Newgate--the prison of common felons, and there, in a small room, strictly guarded, he remained for more than two months. At first he would send for no lawyer, for he fancied that there must either be some error on the part of the government, or that the suspicion against him must be so slight as to be easily removable. But day went by on day, and hour followed hour, without any appearance of a change in his fate. There came a great alteration, however, in his character. He became morose, gloomy, irritable. Every dark point in his own fate and history--every painful event which had occurred for many years--every doubt or suspicion which had spread gloom and anxiety through his mind, was now magnified a thousand-fold by long, brooding, solitary meditation. He pondered such things daily, hourly, in the broad day, in the dead, still night, when want of exercise deprived him of sleep, till his brain seemed to turn, and his whole heart was filled with stern bitterness.