The Silent Gate Author:Tighe Hopkins 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: s THE MASTER-KEY OF NEWGATE. ALL London sounded the name of Dr. Ashmole. A man so gifted, and so daring: what would become of him? In a week, half of what ... more »was known of him was in the newspapers, the other half was the table-talk of the clubs. Himself invisible, he focussed the gaze of the town. No one could get speech of him, and whispers returned upon the whisperers; for Dr. Ashmole, in his cell in Newgate, was " at home " only to his solicitor. He had been committed for trial, bail refused; and, in the quiet of the prison, he sat upon the croup of ugly expectation. His solicitor excepted, he was the only person in London who doubted that the jury would acquit him. He stood within the danger of the gallows; evading the gallows, he could not, if convicted, escape a sentence of penal servitude; and conviction seemed to him a certainty. At thirty-five years of age—successful, handsome, envied, and admired—he had sunk to this sordid pass. Acquitted even, what were his hereafter ? Fastidious and vain, he had already in resolve broken with his world, though there were women who, were he doubly and trebly dishonoured, would have broken with theirs, to have him to friend again. With his solicitor he was cool, precise, and calculating ; but his gratitude for the care with which his case was being elaborated was not unmingled with contempt. The day came when the solicitor said the case was complete, and he need trouble his client no further; and Ashmole, left alone, dwelt for a time in the darkest places of the human spirit. The silence of the prison began to be appalling. Ashmole had read of life in prison, but this did not tally with the books. He knew that, as an un- convicted prisoner, he would not be associated with felons; that he would have no task to perform, and that, ...« less