In one angle of the room stood a disused fire-place, with a rusty grate and broken chimney-piece; in the other there was a sort of box, contrived between the wall and the boards, that looked like an apology for a cupboard.

Towards this box Sharples directed his steps, and, unlocking a hatch in the door, disclosed a recess scarcely as large, and certainly not as clean, as a dog-kennel.
"Vill this do ?" demanded the constable, taking the candle from the lantern, the better to display the narrow limits of the hole.

"I call this ere crib the Little-Ease, arter the runaway prentices' cells in Guildhall.

I _have_ squeezed three kids into it afore now.

To be sure," he added, lowering his tone, "they wos little 'uns, and one on 'em was smothered--ough! ough!--how this cough chokes me!" Sheppard, meanwhile, whose hands were at liberty, managed to possess himself, unperceived, of the spike of a halbert, which was lying, apart from the pole, upon a bench near him.