But this time, officer as he was, Gus took him by the collar, and shoved him back, and said, "Look at the lady, you brute, and hold your tongue!" And when he looked at my wife's situation, Captain Sparr became redder for shame than he had before been for anger.

"I'm sorry she's married to such a good-for-nothing," muttered he, and fell back; and my poor wife and I walked out of the court, and back to our dismal room in the prison.
It was a hard place for a gentle creature like her to be confined in; and I longed to have some of my relatives with her when her time should come.
But her grandmother could not leave the old lieutenant; and my mother had written to say that, as Mrs.Hoggarty was with us, she was quite as well at home with her children.

"What a blessing it is for you, under your misfortunes," continued the good soul, "to have the generous purse of your aunt for succour!" Generous purse of my aunt, indeed! Where could Mrs.Hoggarty be?
It was evident that she had not written to any of her friends in the country, nor gone thither, as she threatened.
But as my mother had already lost so much money through my unfortunate luck, and as she had enough to do with her little pittance to keep my sisters at home; and as, on hearing of my condition, she would infallibly have sold her last gown to bring me aid, Mary and I agreed that we would not let her know what our real condition was--bad enough! Heaven knows, and sad and cheerless.

Old Lieutenant Smith had likewise nothing but his half-pay and his rheumatism; so we were, in fact, quite friendless.
That period of my life, and that horrible prison, seem to me like recollections of some fever.

What an awful place!--not for the sadness, strangely enough, as I thought, but for the gaiety of it; for the long prison galleries were, I remember, full of life and a sort of grave bustle.