Accordingly the bailiff, two days ago, had rousted him from his clean, well-lighted apartment in the Castle, and chivvied him down a long narrow alley, a sort of sheep-chute that ran direct to the holding-pen of the Old Bailey. Thence into a Yard where a magistrate (or so it could be presumed from his mien and his Wig) had peered down at him from a balcony (for it had been learnt long ago that magistrates who swapped air with Newgate prisoners soon died of gaol fever). Jack had declined to plead, and so the usual procedure had been effected: back up that alley to Newgate. But to the Press-Room instead of his lovely apartment. There Jack had been stripped to his drawers and very very strongly encouraged to lie down flat on his back on the stone floor. The four corners of the Press-Room were adorned with iron staples set into the floor. These had been connected to his wrists and ankles by chains. Then, in an uncanny prefigurement of the penalty for High Treason, the chains had been drawn tight, so that he was spread-eagled.