In Prison and Out by Hesba Stretton Author:Sarah Smith General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1880 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV. Old Euclid's Hoard. AS Mrs. Fell, leaning heavily on the arm of Bess, crept homeward after her sorrowful visit to the pawnbroker, they saw an old man, one of their neighbours, making his way with a shambling and limping tread along the uneven pavement before them. The lamps were lit down the narrow and dirty street, and the light fell on the dingy figure of the old man as he passed under them, with his stooping shoulders and his long ragged locks of grey hair falling below his battered and broken hat, round which still clung a little band of black material that had become nearly brown with rain and sunshine. He was a small man, and seemed to have withered and shrunk into a more meagre thinness than when his clothes had been bought, now many years ago. The face under the battered hat was of a yellow brownness and much winkled, with shaggy eyebrows hanging over his eyes. There was a gleam in these dim and sunken eyes, as if it was possible for him to smile, but the possibility seldom became a fact. He looked half asleep as he shuffled along, and in a low husky voice he was dreamily crying cresses, but not at all as though he expected any one of his neighbours to spend a penny on his perishable stock. " There's poor old Euclid ! " said Mrs. Fell in a tone of pity, as if she was looking at one whose circumstances were as bad, if not worse, than her own. The old man's Christian name was Euclid, his surname Jones, but in the multitude of Joneses the latter had long been lost, and was almost forgotten. He was the son of a village schoolmaster in some quiet spot in Wales, who had called his onl...« less