Look! a score of 'em are making off yonder--swimming to their holes.

But they will come back again with some of their comrades, when you are left alone, and without a light.

Unlike other vermin, the rats of the Fleet are extraordinarily sociable--ho! ho!" And, chuckling at his own jest, Grimbald turned to Sir Giles Mompesson, who, with Joachim Tunstall, was standing at the summit of the steps, as if unwilling to venture into the damp region below, and observed--"The worshipful gentleman does not like the appearance of his quarters, it seems, Sir Giles; but we cannot give him better,--and, though the cell might be somewhat more comfortable if it were drier, and perhaps more wholesome, yet it is uncommonly quiet, and double the size of any other in the Fleet.

I never could understand why it should be called the 'Stone Coffin'-- but so it is.

Some prisoners have imagined they would get their death with cold from a single night passed within it--but that's a mistaken notion altogether." "You have proof to the contrary in Sir Ferdinando Mounchensey, father of the present prisoner," said Sir Giles, in a derisive tone.