The Pic-nic Papers Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOME ACCOUNT OF MARCUS BELL, THE CONVICT. BY LEITCH RITCHIE. I Chanced to be present at the trial of this young man and his companions, and was rather wea... more »ried than interested by the detail of the daring', yet common crimes of which they had been guilty. A female witness, however, at length aroused my attention ; not by her beauty, so much lauded by the newspapers, but by a singularity of manner, which escaped the observation of all the reporters, with one exception. Her calmness appeared to me to have something of desperation. When desired to look at the prisoner, Bell, she obeyed ; but her glance was instantaneously withdrawn, and never again returned to the same object. When going out of the court, the same young woman passed me—pale and composed no more, but with flushed cheeks, and crushing her fingers within each other, as if to counteract some agony VOL. I. F of the mind by physical pain. I addressed her—I could not help it—and the rather that it was in so public a thoroughfare as the Old Bailey, and in broad daylight, when malice itself could not suspect me of improper motives in speaking to one of her shameful and degraded caste. The information I obtained from her induced me to visit the convict in prison; and the story which, by the aid of her hints, I drew from him, seems to me to be not unworthy of record. Be it observed, that I wish to excite no sympathy for Bell—a penal colony is the best place for such desperadoes ; and his punishment is as just as his guilt was manifest. It appears that Marcus Bell was born in Chester, and that his family was respectable, though far from being rich. After his father's death, his mother let the greater part of her house in lodgings ; and her son, the only child, was sent to an attorney's office. The lad, if I m...« less