On Jack and Bob's first visit they'd neglected to bring a light, or money with which to buy one, and had blundered down-stairs into a room with a stone floor that made crackling noises beneath their feet as they walked. It was impossible to breathe the air there, and so after a few moments of blind panic they had found their way out and fled back into Newgate Street. There, Jack had noticed that his feet were bloody, and supposed that he must have stepped on broken glass. Bob had the same affliction. But Bob, unlike Jack, was wearing shoes, and so the blood could not have come from him. On careful inspection of the soles of those shoes, the mystery was solved: the blood was not smeared about, but spotted his soles, an array of little bursts. At the center of each burst was a small fleshy gray tube: the vacant corpse of an engorged louse that Bob had stepped on. This accounted for the mysterious crackling noise that they had heard while walking around in that room. As they soon learned, it was called the Stone Hold, and was accounted one of the lowest and worst wards of the prison, occupied only by common felons – such as the late John Cole – who had absolutely no money. Jack and Bob never returned to it.