It was near midnight when we parted, and I tried to sleep as well as I could in the dirty little sofa-bedstead of Mr.Aminadab's back-parlour.
That morning was fine and sunshiny, and I heard all the bells ringing cheerfully for church, and longed to be walking to the Foundling with my wife: but there were the three iron doors between me and liberty, and I had nothing for it but to read my prayers in my own room, and walk up and down afterwards in the court at the back of the house.

Would you believe it?
This very court was like a cage! Great iron bars covered it in from one end to another; and here it was that Mr.Aminadab's gaol-birds took the air.
They had seen me reading out of the prayer-book at the back-parlour window, and all burst into a yell of laughter when I came to walk in the cage.

One of them shouted out "Amen!" when I appeared; another called me a muff (which means, in the slang language, a very silly fellow); a third wondered that I took to my prayer-book _yet_.
"When do you mean, sir ?" says I to the fellow--a rough man, a horse-dealer.
"Why, when you are going _to be hanged_, you young hypocrite!" says the man.

"But that is always the way with Brough's people," continued he.

"I had four greys once for him--a great bargain, but he would not go to look at them at Tattersall's, nor speak a word of business about them, because it was a Sunday." "Because there are hypocrites," sir, says I, "religion is not to be considered a bad thing; and if Mr.Brough would not deal with you on a Sunday, he certainly did his duty." The men only laughed the more at this rebuke, and evidently considered me a great criminal.