Once we had debouched into the yard, the crowding abated, and I breathed a little freer. Weather has been dry of late, so it was more dusty than muddy. The brazier in which the branding-irons are kept at the ready was still glowing, and spinning up a plume of sharply scented coal-smoke, which I phant’sied might cleanse the air of whatever miasma causes the gaol-fever. I stood near it, reading the red-hot letters of iron strewn about in the coals, viz. V for Vagabond, T for Thief, &c., and keeping an eye on Mr. Kikin to see where he would alight. The magistrates, clerks, &c., had already abandoned the high covered veranda from which justice is dispensed. Most of the spectators, as I have mentioned, had already departed. Those who remained had all gravitated to the wooden walls of the pens where the men and women prisoners are kept. They were reaching over the barriers to pass purses of coins, loaves of bread, apples, &c., to their friends, children, wives, and husbands on the other side, who raked in these prizes with fettered and scabrous hands. The bailiffs were of course herding all of the prisoners towards the Janus Gate. They made no move to interfere with the transactions I have just described, well knowing that most of the money being handed over in those shabby little purses would presently be in their own pockets. Of course, material goods were not all that passed over that barricade; there were kisses, hand-clasps, weeping, wailing, and declarations of love æternal, particularly in the cases of the ones who’d just been given tickets to Tyburn. But I will elide these, on a pretext that they are not germane. In truth, it is too pathetic for words.