Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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As the minutes flew by the multitude increased.

The salesmen of hot potatoes, coffee, pies, and other delicacies, were threading their way through the crowd.

Some loud-voiced fellows began to cry out the last dying speech and confession of the notorious murderer, Gregson, better known as the Bristol Badger. They recited some doggrel lines as they took their way along, which persons of a powerful imagination might suppose to be the production of the wretched man who was about to die.

The windows of the houses commanding a view of the ghastly scene now began to fill with people.

In them too, many of the fair sex were to be seen. The crowd before the scaffold became denser—​people, as is usual on occasions of this description, push and elbow each other. An English crowd is bound to do this.

“Where ye’re shovin’ to?” said a tall youth to a brawny looking man, who to all appearance was a navigator. “Jest keep yer elbows to yerself.”

“It aint my fault, yer fool,” said the navigator. “It’s the people behind who’s a pushing.”