"Mr. Hawes is the governor of this jail. I have no power to interfere with his acts, supported as they are by the visiting justices; and I have but one advice to give you: Submit to the discipline and to Mr. Hawes in everything; it will be the worse for you if you don't."

So saying, he went out abruptly, leaving his petitioner with his eyes fixed ruefully upon the door by which his last hope had left him.

The moment the reverend official had got outside the door, his countenance, which had fallen, took a complacent air. He prided himself that he had conquered an impulse, an idle impulse.

"The poor fellow is in the right," said he to himself as he left the cell; "but if I had let him see I thought so, he might have been encouraged to resist, and then he would have only suffered all the more."

And so, having done what he calculated was the expedient thing to do, he went his way satisfied and at peace with Mr. Hawes and all mankind.

When he glided away and took hope with him, disdain, despair and frenzy gushed from the thief's boiling bosom in one wild moan; and with that moan he dashed himself on his face on the floor, though it was as hard as Hawes and cold as Jones.

Thus he lay crushed in blank despair a moment, the next he rose fiercely to his knees, he looked up through the hole they called his window, and saw a little piece of blue sky no bigger than a Bible, he held his hand up to that blue sky, he fixed his dilating eye on that blue sky, and with one long raging yell of horrible words hurled from a heart set on fire by wrongs and despair and tempting fiends, he cursed the successor of the apostles before the Majesty of Heaven.



CHAPTER XIII.

SOLITUDE is no barrier whatever to sin. Such prayers as Robinson's are a disgrace to those who provoke them, but a calamity to him who utters them. Robinson was now a far worse man than ever he had been out of prison. The fiend had fixed a claw in his heart, and we may be sure he felt the recoil of his ill prayers. He hated the human race, which produced such creatures as Hawes and nothing to keep them in check.

"From this hour I speak no more to any of those beasts!"

Such was his resolve, made with clinched teeth and nails. And he curled himself up like a snake and turned his back upon mankind, and his face to the wall. Robinson had begun his career in this place full of hopes. He hoped by good conduct to alleviate his condition as he had done in other jails; conscious of various talents, he hoped by skill as well as by good conduct to better his condition even in a jail. Such hopes are a part of our nature, and were not in his case unreasonable. These hopes were soon extinguished. He came down to a confident hope that by docility and good conduct he should escape all evils except those inseparable from a prisoner's lot.

When he discovered that Hawes loved to punish his prisoners, and indeed could hardly get through the day without it, and that his crank was an unavoidable trap to catch the prisoners and betray them to punishment, he sunk lower and lower in despondency, till at last there was but one bit of blue hope in all his horizon. He still hoped something against tyranny and cruelty from the representative of the gospel of mercy in the place. But when his reverence told him nothing was to be expected from that quarter, his last hope went out and he was in utter darkness.

Yet Mr. Jones was not a hypocrite nor a monster; he was only a commonplace man—a thing molded by circumstances instead of molding them. In him the official outweighed the apostle, for a very good reason—he was commonplace. This was his defect. His crime was misplacing his commonplace self. A man has a right to be commonplace in the middle of the New Forest, or in the great desert, or at Fudley-cum-Pipes in the fens of Lincolnshire. But at the helm of a struggling nation, or in the command of an army in time of war, or at the head of the religious department of a jail, fighting against human wolves, tigers and foxes, to be commonplace is an iniquity and leads to crime.

The man was a humane man. It was not in his nature to be cruel to a prisoner, and his humanity was, like himself, negative not positive, passive not active—of course; it was commonplace humanity.

After looking on in silence for a twelvemonth or two he remonstrated against Hawes's barbarity. He would have done more; he would have stopped it—if it could have been stopped without any trouble. Cold water was thrown on his remonstrance; he cooled directly!

Now cold water and hot fire have been thrown on men battling for causes no higher nor holier than this, yet neither has fire been able to wither nor water to quench their honest zeal. But this good soul on being sprinkled laid down his arms; he was commonplace. Moreover, he was guilty of something beside cowardice. He let a small egotistical pique sully as well as betray a great cause. "The justices have thrown cold water on my remonstrance—very well, gentlemen, torture your prisoners ad libitum; I shall interfere no more; we shall see which was in the right, you or I."

This was a narrow little view of wide and terrible consequences; it was infinitesimal egotism—the spirit and essence of commonplace.

His inclinations were good, but feeble—he was commonplace. His heart was good, but tepid—he was commonplace. Had he loved the New Testament and the Saviour of mankind, he would have fought Hawes tooth and nail; he could not have helped it. But he did not love either; he only liked them—he was commonplace. When the thief cursed this man, he was guilty of an extravagance as well as a crime; the man was not worth cursing—he was commonplace.

The new chaplain arrived soon after these events. The new chaplain was accompanied by his friend, the Rev. James Lepel, chaplain of a jail in the north of England. After five years' unremitting duty he was now enjoying a week's leave of absence.

The three clergymen visited the cells. Mr. Lepel cross-examined several prisoners. The new chaplain spoke little, but seemed observant, and once or twice made a note. Now it so happened that almost the last cell they entered was Tom Robinson's. They found him sitting all of a heap in a corner, moody and sullen.

At sight of three black coats and white ties the thief opened his eyes, and with a sort of repugnance turned his back on the intruders.

"Come, my lad," said the turnkey sternly, "no tricks, if you please. Turn round," cried he savagely, "and make your bow to the gentlemen."

Robinson wheeled round with flashing eyes, and checking an evident desire to dash at them, instantly made a bow so very low, so very obsequious, and, by a furtive expression, so contemptuous, that Mr. Lepel colored with indignation and moved toward the door in silence.

The turnkey muttered, "He has been very strange this few days past. Mr. Fry thinks he is hardly safe." Then, turning to the new chaplain, the man, whose name was Evans, said, "Better not go into his cell, sir, without one of us with you."

"What is the matter with him?" inquired the reverend gentleman.

"Oh, I don't know as there is anything the matter with him; only he has been disciplined once or twice, and it goes down the wrong way with some of them at first starting. Governor says he will have to be put in the dark cell if he does not get better."

"The dark cell? hum! Pray what is the effect of the dark cell on a prisoner?"

"Well, sir, it cows them more than anything."

"Where are your dark cells?"

"They are down below, sir. You can look at them after the kitchen."

"I must go into the town," said Mr. Lepel, looking at his watch. "I promised to dine with my relations at three o'clock."

"Come and see the oubliettes first. We have seen everything else."

"With all my heart!"

They descended below the ground-floor, and then Evans unlocked a massive tight-fitting door opening upon what appeared to be a black substance; this was, however, no substance—but vacancy without any degree of light. The light crossing the threshold from the open door seemed to cut a slice out of it.

The newcomers looked into it. Mr. Lepel with grim satisfaction, the other with awe and curiosity.

"When shall you be back, Lepel?" inquired he thoughtfully.

"Oh, before nine o'clock."

"Then perhaps you will both do me the honor to drink a cup of tea with me," said Mr. Jones, courteously.

"With pleasure."

"Good-by, then, for the present," said the new chaplain.

"Why, where are you going?"

"In here."

"What, into the dark cell?"

"Yes!"

"Well!" ejaculated Evans.

"You won't stay there long."

"Until you return, Lepel."

"What a fancy!"

Mr. Jones looked not a little surprised. The turnkey grinned. The reverend gentleman stepped at once into the cell and was lost to sight.

"Do not let me out before eight o'clock," said his voice, "and you, Lepel, inquire for me as soon as you return, for I feel a little nervous. Now shut the door."

The door was closed on the reverend gentleman, and the little group outside, after looking at one another with a humorous expression, separated, and each went after his own affairs.

Evans lingered behind, and took a look at the massy door, behind which for the first time a man had gone voluntarily, and after grave deliberation delivered himself at long intervals of the two following profound reflections:

"Well! I'm blest!!"

"Well! I'm blowed!!"



CHAPTER XIV.

MR. LEPEL returned somewhat earlier than he had intended. On entering the jail it so happened that he met the governor, and seized this opportunity of conversing with him.

He expressed at once so warm an admiration of the jail and the system pursued in it, that Hawes began to take a fancy to him.

They compared notes, and agreed that no system but the separate and silent had a leg to stand on; and as they returned together from visiting the ground-floor cells, Mr. Lepel had the honor of giving a new light to Hawes himself.

"If I could have my way the debtors should be in separate cells. I would have but one system in a jail."

Hawes laughed incredulously. "There would be a fine outcry if we treated the debtors the same as we do the rogues."

"Mr. Hawes," said the other firmly, "an honest man very seldom finds his way into any part of a jail. Extravagant people and tradesmen who have abused the principle of credit, deserve punishment, and above all require discipline and compulsory self-communion to bring them to amend their ways."

"That is right, sir," cried Hawes, a sudden light breaking on him, "and it certainly is a mistake letting them enjoy themselves."

"And corrupt each other."

Hawes. A prison should be confinement.

Lepel. And seclusion from all but profitable company.

Hawes. It is not a place of amusement.

Lepel. There should be no idle conversation.

"And no noise," put in Hawes hastily.

"However, this prison is a model for all the prisons in the land, and I shall feel quite sad when I go back to my duty in Cumberland."

"Cumberland? Why, you are our new chaplain, aren't ye?"

"No! I am not so fortunate, I am a friend of his; my name is Lepel."

"Oh, you are Mr. Lepel, and where is our one? I heard he had been all over the jail."

"What, have you not seen him?"

"No! he has never been near me. Not very polite, I think."

"Oh! oh!"

"Hallo! what is wrong!"

"I think I know where he is; he is not far off. I will go and find him if you will excuse me."

"No! we won't trouble you. Here, Hodges, come here. Have you seen the new chaplain—where is he?"

"Well, sir, Evans tells me he is—" click!

"Confound you, don't stand grinning. Where is he?"

"In the black hole, sir!"

"What d'ye mean by the black hole? The dust hole?"

"No, sir, I mean the dark cells."

"Then why don't you say the dark cells? Has he been there long?"

Mr. Lepel answered the question. "Ever since three o'clock, and it is nearly nine; and we are both of us to drink tea with Mr. Jones."

Mr. Hawes showed no hurry. "What did he want to go in them for?"

"I have no idea, unless it was to see what it is like."

"Well, but I like that!" said Hawes. "That is entering into the system. Let us see how he comes on."

Mr. Hawes, Mr. Lepel and Hodges went to the dark cells; on their way they were joined by Evans.

The governor took out his own keys, and Evans having indicated the cell, for there were three, he unlocked it and threw the door wide open. They all looked in, but there was nothing to be seen.

"I hope nothing is the matter," said Mr. Lepel, in considerable agitation, and he groped his way into the cave. As he put out his hand it was taken almost violently by the self-immured, who cried:

"Oh, Lepel!" and held him in a strong but tremulous grasp. Then, after a pause, he said more calmly: "The light dazzles me! the place seems on fire now! Perhaps you will be kind enough to lend me your arm, Lepel."

Mr. Lepel led him out; he had one hand before his eyes, which he gradually withdrew while speaking. He found himself in the middle of a group with a sly sneer on their faces mixed with some curiosity.

"How long have I been there?" asked he quietly.

"Six hours; it is nine o'clock."

"Only six hours! incredible!"

"Well, sir, I suppose you are not sorry to be out?"

"This is Mr. Hawes, the governor," put in Mr. Lepel.

Hawes continued jocosely, "What does it feel like, sir?"

"I shall have the honor of telling you that in private, Mr. Hawes. I think, Lepel, we have an engagement with Mr. Jones at nine o'clock." So saying, the new chaplain, with a bow to the governor, took his friend's arm and went to tea with Mr. Jones.

"There, now," said Hawes to the turnkeys, "that is a gentleman. He doesn't blurt everything out before you fellows; he reserves it for his superior officer."

Next morning the new chaplain requested Mr. Lepel to visit the prisoner's cells in a certain order, and make notes of their characters as far as he could guess them. He himself visited them in another order and made his notes. In the evening they compared these. We must be content with an extract or two.

MR. LEPEL'S. THE NEW CHAPLAIN'S.

Rock, No. 37.— A very promising 37, Rock.— Professes penitence. subject, penitent and resigned. Asked him suddenly what sins Says, "if the door of the prison weighed most on his conscience. was left open he would not go No answer. Prepared with an out." Has learned 250 texts, and abstract penitence, but no is learning fifteen a day. particulars: reason obvious.

Mem. With this man speak on any topic rather than religion at present. Pray for this self-deceiver as I would for a murderer.

Josephs, No. — An interesting Josephs.— An amiable boy; seems boy, ignorant, but apparently out of health and spirits. well-disposed. In ill health. Says he has been overworked The surgeon should be consulted and punished for inability. Shall about him. intercede with the governor for him.

Mem. Pale and hollow-eyed; pulse feeble.

Strutt, No. — Sullen, impenitent Strutt.— This poor man is in and brutal. Says it is no use his a state of deep depression. I learning texts, they won't stay much fear the want of light in his head. Discontented; wants and air and society is crushing to go out in the yard. The best him. He is fifty years old. one can hope for here is that the punishment, which he finds so Mem. Inquire whether separate severe, will deter him in future. confinement tries men harder Says he will never come here after a certain age. Talked again, but doubts whether he to him; told him stories with shall get out alive. Gave him all the animation I could. some tracts. Stayed half an hour with him. He brightened up a little, and asked me to come again. Nothing to be done here at present but amuse the poor soul.

Mem. Watch him jealously.

Jessup.— The prisoner whose Jessup.— Like Rock, professes term, owing to his excellent extravagant penitence, indifference conduct, is reduced from twelve to personal liberty, and love of months to nine months, so that Scripture. He overdoes it greatly. he goes out next week. Having However, it appears he has gained discovered that the news had his point by it. He has induced not been conveyed to him, I asked Mr. Jones to plead for him in Mr. Hawes to let me be the bearer. mitigation of punishment, and When I told him, his only remark next week he leaves prison for was, with an air of regret: a little while. "Then I shall not finish my Gospels!" I begged for an He asked me to hear some texts. explanation, when he told I said, "No, my poor fellow; they me that for eight months he will do you as much good whether I had been committing the Gospels hear you them or not." By a light to heart, and that he was just that flashed into his eye I saw beginning St. John, which now he he comprehended the equivoque; should never finish. I said he but he suppressed his intelligence must finish it at home in the and answered piously, intervals of honest labor. His "That they will, your reverence." countenance brightened, and he said he would.

A most cheering case, and one of the best proofs of the efficacy of the separate and silent system I have met with for some time. I fear I almost grudge you the possession of such an example.

Robinson— A bad subject, Robinson.—This man wears a rebellious and savage; refuses to singular look of scorn as well speak. Time and the discipline as hatred, which, coupled with will probably break him of this; his repeated refusals to speak but I do not think he will ever to me, provoked me so that I make a good prisoner! felt strongly tempted to knock him down. How unworthy, to be provoked at anything a great sufferer can say or do; every solitary prisoner must surely be a great sufferer.

My judgment is quite at fault here. I know no more than a child what is this man's character, and the cause of his strange conduct.

Mem. Inquire his antecedents of the turnkeys. Oh, Lord, enlighten me, and give me wisdom for the great and deep and difficult task I have so boldly undertaken!

The next day the new chaplain met the surgeon in the jail and took him into Josephs' cell.

"He only wants a little rest and nourishing food; he would be the better for a little amusement, but—" and the man of science shrugged his shoulders.

"Can you read?" said Mr. Lepel.

"Very little, sir."

"Let the schoolmaster come to him every day," suggested that experienced individual. He knew what separate confinement was. What bores a boy out of prison amuses him in it.

Hawes gave a cold consent. So poor little Josephs had a richer diet and rest from crank and pillory, and the schoolmaster spent half an hour every day teaching him; and above all, the new chaplain sat in his cell and told him stories that interested him—told him how very wicked some boys had been; what a many clever wicked things they had done and not been happy, then how they had repented and learned to pray to be good, and how by Divine help they had become good, and how some had gone to heaven soon after, and were now happy and pure as the angels; and others had stayed on earth and were good and honest and just men; not so happy as those others who were dead, but content (and that the wicked never are), and waiting God's pleasure to go away and be happy forever.

Josephs listened to the good chaplain's tales and conversation with wonderful interest, and his face always brightened when that gentleman came into his cell. The schoolmaster reported him not quick, but docile. These were his halcyon days.

But Robinson remained a silent basilisk. The chaplain visited him every day, said one or two kind words to him and retired without receiving a word or a look of acknowledgment. One day, surprised and hurt by this continued obduracy, the chaplain retired with an audible sigh. Robinson heard it, and ground his teeth with satisfaction. Solitary, tortured and degraded, he had still found one whom he could annoy a little bit.

The governor and the new chaplain agreed charmingly; constant civilities passed between them. The chaplain assisted Mr. Hawes to turn the phrases of his yearly report; and Mr. Hawes more than repaid him by consenting to his introducing various handicrafts into the prison—at his own expense, not the county's.

Parson must have got a longer purse than most of us, thought Hawes, and it increased his respect.

Hawes shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say, "You are just flinging your money into the dirt;" but the other, interpreting his look, said:

"I hope more good from this than from all the sermons I shall preach in your chapel."

Probably Mr. Hawes would not have been so indifferent had he known that this introduction of rational labor was intended as the first step toward undermining and expelling the sacred crank.

This clergyman had a secret horror and hatred of the crank. He called it a monster got by folly upon science to degrade labor below theft; for theft is immoral, but crank labor is immoral and idiotic, too, said he. The crank is a diabolical engine to keep thieves from ever being anything but thieves. He arrived at this conclusion by a chain of reasoning for which there is no room in a narrative already smothered in words.

This antipathy to the crank quite overpowered him. He had been now three weeks in the jail, and all that time only thrice in the labor-yard. It cut his understanding like a knife to see a man turn a handle for hours and nothing come of it.

However, one day, from a sense of duty, he forced himself into the labor-yard and walked wincing down the row.

"These are our schoolmen," said he. "As the schoolmen labored most intellectually and scientifically—practical result, nil, so these labor harder than other men—result, nil. This is literally 'beating the air.' The ancients imagined tortures particularly trying to nature, that of Sisyphus to wit; everlasting labor embittered by everlasting nihilification. We have made Sisyphism vulgar. Here are fifteen Sisyphi. Only the wise or ancients called this thing infernal torture; our old women call it salutary discipline."

He was running on in this style, heaping satire and sorrow upon the crank, when suddenly, at the mouth of one of the farthest cells, he stopped and threw up his hands with an ejaculation of astonishment and dismay. There was a man jammed in a strait waistcoat, pinned against the wall by a strap, and throttling in a huge collar; his face was white, his lips livid, and his eyes rolling despairingly. It was Thomas Robinson. This sight took away the chaplain's breath. When he recovered himself, "What is this?" said he to the turnkeys, sternly.

"Prisoner refractory at the crank," answered Hodges, doggedly.

The clergyman walked up to Robinson and examined the collar, the waistcoat and the strap. "Have you the governor's authority for this act?" said he firmly.

"Rule is if they won't do their work, the jacket."

"Have you the governor's authority for this particular act?"

"In a general way we have."

"In a word, you are not acting under his authority, and you know it. Take the man down this moment."

The men hesitated.

"If you don't I shall."

The turnkeys, a little staggered by his firmness, began to confer in whispers. The chaplain, who was one of your decided men, could not wait the consultation. He sprang to Robinson's head and began to undo the collar. The others, seeing this decided move, came and helped him. The collar and the strap being loosed, the thief's body, ensacked as it was, fell helplessly forward. He had fainted during the discussion; in fact, his senses were shut when the chaplain first came to the cell. The chaplain caught him, and being a very strong man, saved him from a dangerous fall and seated him gently with his back to the wall. Water was sprinkled in his face. The chaplain went hastily to find the governor. He came to him pale and out of breath.

"I found the turnkeys outraging a prisoner."

"Indeed!" said the governor. It was a new idea to him that anything could be an outrage on a prisoner.

"They confessed they had not your authority, so I took upon me to undo their act."

"Humph!"

"I now leave the matter in your hands, sir."

"I will see into it, sir."

The chaplain left Mr. Hawes abruptly, for he was seized with a sudden languor and nausea; he went to his own house and there he was violently sick. Shaking off as quickly as he could this weakness, he went at once to Robinson's cell. He found him coiled up like a snake. He came hastily into the cell with the natural effusion of a man who had taken another man's part.

"I want to ask you one question: What had you done that they should use you like that?"

No answer.

"It is not from idle curiosity I ask you, but that I may be able to advise you, or intercede for you if the punishment should appear too severe for the offense."

No answer.

"Come, I would wait here ever so long upon the chance of your speaking to me if you were the only prisoner, but there are others in their solitude longing for me; time is precious; will you speak to one who desires to be your friend?"

No answer.

A flush of impatience and anger crossed the chaplain's brow. In most men it would have found vent in words. This man but turned away to hide it from its object. He gulped his brief ire down and said only, "So then I am never to be any use to you," and went sorrowfully away.

Robinson coiled himself up a little tighter, and hugged his hatred of all mankind closer, like a treasure that some one had just tried to do him out of.

As the chaplain came out of his cell he was met by Hawes, whose countenance wore a gloomy expression that soon found its way into words.

"The chaplain is not allowed to interfere between me and the prisoners in this jail."

"Explain, Mr. Hawes."

"You have been and ordered my turnkeys to relax punishment."

"You forget, Mr. Hawes, I explained to you that they were acting without the requisite authority from you."

"That is all right, and I have called them to account, but then you are not to order them either; you should have applied to me."

"I see, I see! Forgive me this little breach of routine where a human being's sufferings would have been prolonged by etiquette."

"Ugh! Well, it must not occur again."

"I trust the occasion will not."

"For that matter, you will often see refractory prisoners punished in this jail. You had better mind your own business in the jail, it will find you work enough."

"I will, Mr. Hawes; to dissuade men from cruelty is a part of it."

"If you come between me and the prisoners, sir, you won't be long here."

The new chaplain smiled.

"What does it matter whether I'm here or in Patagonia, so that I do my duty wherever I am?" said he with a fine mixture of good-humor and spirit.

Hawes turned his back rudely and went and reduced Robinson's supper fifty per cent.

"Evans, is that sort of punishment often inflicted here?"

"Well, sir, yes. It is a common punishment of this jail."

"It must be very painful."

"No, sir, it's a little oncomfortable that is all; and then we've got such a lot here we are obliged to be down on 'em like a sledge-hammer, or they'd eat us up alive."

"Have you got the things, the jacket, collar, etc.?"

"I know where to find them," said Evans with a sly look.

"Bring them to me directly to this empty cell."

"Well, sir," higgled Evans, "in course I don't like to refuse your reverence."

"Then don't refuse me," retorted the other, sharp as a needle.

Evans went off directly and soon returned with the materials. The chaplain examined them a while; he then took off his coat.

"Operate on me, Evans."

"Operate on you, sir!"

"Yes! There, don't stand staring, my good man; hold up the waistcoat—now strap it tight—tighter—no nonsense—Robinson was strapped tighter than that yesterday. I want to know what we are doing to our fellow-creatures in this place. The collar now."

"But, sir, the collar will nip you. I tell you that beforehand."

"Not more than it nips my prisoners. Now strap me to the wall. Why do you hesitate?"

"I don't know whether I am doing right, sir, you being a parson. Perhaps I shall have no luck after this."

"Don't be silly, Evans. Volenti non fit injuria—that means, you may torture a bishop if he bids you."

"There you are, sir."

"Yes! here I am. Now go away and come in half an hour."

"I think I had better stay, sir. You will soon be sick of it."

"Go, and come in half an hour," was the firm reply.

Our chaplain felt that if the man did not go he should not be five minutes before he asked to be released, and he was determined to know "what we are doing."

Evans had not been gone ten minutes before he bitterly repented letting him go, and when that worthy returned he found him muttering faintly, "It is in a good cause-it is in a good cause—"

Evans wore a grin.

"You shall pay for that grin," said the chaplain to himself.

"Well, sir, have you had enough of it?"

"Yes, Evans; you may loose me," said the other with affected nonchalance.

"What is it like, sir? haw! haw!"

"It is as you described it, oncomfortable; but the knowledge I have gained in it is invaluable. You shall share it."

"With all my heart, sir; you can tell me what it is like."

"Oh, no! such knowledge can never be imparted by description; you shall take your turn in the jacket."

"Not if I know it."

"What, not for the sake of knowledge?"

"Oh! I can guess what it is like."

"But you will oblige me?"

"Some other way, sir, if you please."

"Besides, I will give you a guinea."

"Oh! that alters the case, sir. But only for half an hour."

"Only for half an hour."

Evans was triced up and pinned to the wall; the chaplain took out a guinea and placed it in his sight, and walked out.

In about ten minutes he returned, and there was Evans, his face drawn down by pain.

"Well, how do you like it?"

"Oh! pretty well, sir; it isn't worth making an outcry about."

"Only a little oncomfortable."

"That is all; if it wasn't for the confounded cramp."

"Let us compare notes," said the chaplain, sitting down opposite. "I found it worse than uncomfortable. First there was a terrible sense of utter impotence, then came on racking cramps, for which there was no relief because I could not move."

"Oh!"

"What?"

"Nothing, sir! mum—mum—dear guinea!"

"The jagged collar gave me much pain, too; it rasped my poor throat like a file."

"Why the dickens didn't you tell me all this before, sir," said Evans ruefully; "it is no use now I've been and gone into the same oven like a fool."

"I had my reasons for not telling you before; good-by for the present."

"Don't stay over the half hour, for goodness' sake, sir."

"No! adieu for the present."

He did not go far. He listened and heard the plucky Evans groan. He came hastily in.

"Courage, my fine fellow, only eight minutes more and the guinea is yours.

"How many more minutes, sir?"

"Eight."

"Then, oh! undo me, sir, if you please."

"What! forfeit the guinea for eight minutes—seven, it is only seven now."

"Hang the guinea, let me down, sir, if there's pity in you."

"With all my heart," said the reverend gentleman, pocketing the guinea, and he loosed Evans with all speed.

The man stretched his limbs with ejaculations of pain between every stretch, and put his handkerchief on very gingerly. He looked sulky and said nothing. The other watched him keenly, for there was something about him that showed his mind was working.

"There is your guinea."

"Oh, no! I didn't earn it."

"Oh, if you think that (putting it to the lips of his pocket), let me make you a present of it" (handing it out again). Evans smiled. "It is a good servant. That little coin has got me one friend more for these poor prisoners. You don't understand me, Evans. Well, you will. Now, look at me; from this moment, sir, you and I stand on a different footing from others in this jail. We know what we are doing when we put a prisoner in that thing; the others don't. The greater the knowledge, the greater the guilt. May we both be kept from the crime of cruelty. Good-night!"

"Good-night, your reverence!" said the man gently, awed by his sudden solemnity.

The chaplain retired. Evans looked after him, and then down into his own hand.

"Well, I'm blowed!—Well, I'm blest!—Got a guinea, though!!"



CHAPTER XV.

GOVERNOR HAWES had qualities good in themselves, but ill-directed, and therefore not good in their results—determination for one. He was not a man to yield a step to opposition. He was a much greater man than Jones. He was like a torrent, to whose progress if you oppose a great stone it brawls and struggles past it and round it and over it with more vigor than before.

"I will be master in this jail!" was the creed of Hawes. He docked Robinson's supper one half, ditto his breakfast next day, and set him a tremendous task of crank. Now in jail a day's food and a day's crank are too nicely balanced to admit of the weights being tampered with. So Robinson's demi-starvation paved the way for further punishment. At one o'clock he was five hundred revolutions short, and instead of going to his dinner he was tied up in the infernal machine. Now the new chaplain came three times into the yard that day, and the third time, about four o'clock, he found Robinson pinned to the wall, jammed in the waistcoat and griped in the collar. His blood ran cold at sight of him, for the man had been hours in the pillory and nature was giving way.

"What has he done?"

"Refractory at crank."

"I saw him working at the crank when I came here last."

"Hasn't made his number good, though."

"Humph! You have the governor's own orders?"

"Yes, sir."

"How long is he to be so?"

"Till fresh orders."

"I will see the effect of this punishment on the prisoner and note it down for my report." And he took out his note-book and leaned his back against the wall.

The simple action of taking out a notebook gave the operators a certain qualm of doubt. Fry whispered Hodges to go and tell the governor. On his return Hodges found the parties as he had left them, except Robinson—he was paler and his lips turning bluer.

"Your victim is fainting," said the chaplain sternly.

"Only shamming, sir," said Fry. "Bucket, Hodges."

The bucket was brought and the contents were flung over Robinson.

The chaplain gave a cry of dismay. The turnkeys both laughed at this.

"You see he was only shamming, sir," said Hodges. "He is come to the moment the water touched him."

"A plain proof he was not shamming. A bucket of water thrown over any one about to faint would always bring them to; but if a man had made up his mind to sham, he could do it in spite of water. Of course you will take him down now?"

"Not till fresh orders."

"On your peril be it if any harm befalls this prisoner—you are warned."

At this juncture Hawes came into the yard. His cheek was flushed and his eye glittered. He expected and rather hoped a collision with his reverence.

"Well, what is the matter?"

"Nothing, sir; only his reverence is threatening us."

"What is he threatening you for?"

"Mr. Hawes, I told these men that I should hold them responsible if any harm came to the prisoner for their cruelty. I now tell you that he has just fainted from bodily distress caused by this infernal engine, and I hold you, Mr. Hawes, responsible for this man's life and well-being, which are here attacked contrary to the custom of all her majesty's prisons, and contrary to the intention of all punishment, which is for the culprit's good, not for his injury either in soul or body.

"And what will you do?" said Hawes, glaring contemptuously at the turnkeys, who wore rather a blank look.

"Mr. Hawes," replied the other gravely, "I have spoken to warn you, not to threaten you."

"What I do is done with the consent of the visiting justices. They are my masters, and no one else."

"They have not seen a prisoner crucified."

"Crucified! What d'ye mean by crucified?"

"Don't you see that the torture before our eyes is crucifixion?"

"No! I don't. No nails!"

"Nails were not always used in crucifixion; sometimes cords. Don't deceive yourself with a name; nothing misleads like a false name. This punishment is falsely called the jacket—it is jacket, collar, straps, applied with cruelty. It is crucifixion minus nails but plus a collar."

"Whatever it is, the justices have seen and approved it. Haven't they, Fry?"

"That they have, sir; scores of times."

"Then may Heaven forgive them and direct me." And the chaplain entered the cell despondently, and bent his pitying eye steadily on the thief, who seemed to him at the moment a better companion than the three honest but cruel men.

He waited there very, very sorrowful and thoughtful for more than half an hour. Then Hawes, who left the yard as soon as he had conquered his opponent, sent in Evans with an order to take Robinson to his dormitory.

The chaplain saw the man taken down from the wall, and that done went hastily to his own house; there, the contest being over, he was seized with a violent sickness and trembling. To see a fellow-creature suffer and not be able to relieve him was death to this man. He was game to the last drop of his blood so long as there was any good to be done, but action ended, a reaction came, in which he was all pity and sorrow and distress because of a fellow-creature's distress. No one that saw his firmness in the torture-cell would have guessed how weak he was within, and how stoutly his great heart had to battle against a sensitive nature and nerves tuned too high.

He gave half an hour to the weakness of nature, and then he was all duty once more.

He went first into Robinson's cell. He found him worse than ever: despair as well as hatred gleamed in his eye.

"My poor fellow, is there no way for you to avoid these dreadful punishments?"

No answer.

It is to be observed, though, that Robinson had no idea how far the chaplain had carried his remonstrance against his torture; that remonstrance had been uttered privately to the turnkeys and the governor. Besides, the man was half stupefied when the chaplain first came there. And now he was in such pain and despair. He was like the genii confined in the chest and thrown into the water by Soliman. Had this good friend come to him at first starting, he would have thrown himself into his arms; but it came too late now. He hated all mankind. He had lost all belief in genuine kindness. Like Orlando,

He thought that all things had been savage here.

The chaplain, on the other hand, began to think that Robinson was a downright brute, and one on whom kindness was and would be wasted. Still, true to his nature, he admitted no small pique. He reasoned gently and kindly with him—very kindly.

"My poor soul," said he, "have you so many friends in this hard place that you can afford to repulse one who desires to be your friend and to do you good?" No answer. "Well, then, if you will not let me comfort you, at least you cannot prevent my praying for you, for you are on the road to despair and will take no help."

So, then, this good creature did actually kneel upon the hard stones of the cell and offer a prayer—a very short but earnest one.

"Oh God, to whom all hearts are open, enlighten me that I may understand this my afflicted brother's heart, and learn how to do him good, and comfort him out of Thy word—Thy grace assisting me."

Robinson looked down at him with wild, staring but lack-luster eyes and open mouth. He rose from the floor, and casting a look of great benignity on the sullen brute, he was about to go, when he observed that Robinson was trembling in a very peculiar way.

"You are ill," said he hastily, and took a step toward him.

At this Robinson, with a wild and furious gesture, waved him to the door and turned his face to the wall; then this refined gentleman bowed his head, as much as to say you shall be master of this apartment and dismiss any one you do not like, and went gently away with a little sigh. And the last that he saw was Robinson trembling with averted face and eyes bent down.

Outside he met Evans, who said to him half bluntly half respectfully, "I don't like to see you going into that cell, sir; the man is not to be trusted. He is very strange."

"What do you mean? do you fear for his reason?"

"Why not, sir? We have sent a pretty many to the lunatic asylum since I was a warder here."

"Ah!"

"And some have broke prison a shorter way than that," said the man very gloomily.

The chaplain groaned—and looked at the speaker with an expression of terror. Evans noticed it and said gravely:

"You should not have come to such place as this, sir; you are not fit for it."

"Why am I not fit for it?"

"Too good for it, sir."

"You talk foolishly, Mr. Evans. In the first place, 'too good' is a ludicrous combination of language, in the next the worse a place is the more need of somebody being good in it to make it better. But I suppose you are one of those who think that evil is naturally stronger than good. Delusion springs from this, that the wicked are in earnest and the good are lukewarm. Good is stronger than evil. A single really good man in an ill place is like a little yeast in a gallon of dough; it can leaven the mass. If St. Paul or even George Whitfield had been in Lot's place all those years there would have been more than fifty good men in Sodom; but this is out of place. I want you to give me the benefit of your experience, Evans. When I went to Robinson and spoke kindly to him he trembled all over. What on earth does that mean?"

"Trembled, did he, and never spoke?"

"Yes!—Well?"

"I'm thinking, sir! I'm thinking. You didn't touch him?"

"Touch him, no; what should I touch him for?"

"Well, don't do it, sir. And don't go near him. You have had an escape, you have. He was in two minds about pitching into you."

"You think it was rage! Humph! it did not give me that impression."

"Sir, did you ever go to pat a strange dog?"

"I have done myself that honor."

"Well, if he wags his tail you know it is all right; but say he puts his tail between his legs, what will he do if you pat him?"

"Bite me. Experto crede."

"No! if you are ever so expert he will bite you or try. Now putting of his tail between his legs, that passes for a sign of fear in a dog, all one as trembling does in a man. Do you see what I am driving at?"

"Yes."

"Then you had better leave the spiteful brute to himself?"

"No! that would be to condemn him to the worst companion he can have."

"But if he should pitch into you, sir?"

"Then he will pitch into a man twice as strong as himself, and a pupil of Bendigo. Don't be silly, Evans."

SUNDAY.

Hodges. Pity you wasn't in chapel, Mr. Fry.

Fry. Why?

Hodges. The new chaplain!

Fry. Well, what did he do?

Hodges. He waked 'em all up, I can tell you. Governor couldn't get a wink all the sermon.

Fry. What did he tell you?

Hodges. Told us he loved us.

Fry. Loved who?

Hodges. All of us. Governor, turnkeys, and especially the prisoners, because they were in trouble. "My Master loves you, though He hates your sins," says he; and "I love every mother's son of you." What d'ye think of that? He loves the whole biling! Told 'em so, however.

Fry. Loves 'em, does he? Well, that's a new lay! After all, there's no accounting for tastes, you know. Haw! haw!

Hodges. Haw! haw! ho!

This same Sunday afternoon, soon after service, the chaplain came to Robinson's cell. Evans unlocked it, looking rather uneasy, and would have come in with the reverend gentleman; but he forbade him and walked quickly into the cell, as Van Amburgh goes among his leopards and panthers. He had in his hand a little box.

"I have brought you some ointment—some nice cooling ointment," said he, "to rub on your neck. I saw it was frayed by that collar."

(Pause.) No answer.

"Will you let me see you use it?"

No answer.

"Come!"

No answer.

The chaplain took the box off the table, opened it and went up to Robinson and began quietly to apply some of the grateful soothing ointment to his frayed throat. The man trembled all over. The chaplain kept his eye calm but firm upon him, as on a dog of doubtful temper. Robinson put up his hand in a feeble sort of way to prevent the other from doing him good. His reverence took the said hand in a quiet but powerful grasp, and applied the ointment all the same. Robinson said nothing, but he was seized with this extraordinary trembling.

"Good-by," said his reverence kindly. "I leave you the box; and see, here are some tracts I have selected for you. They are not dull; there are stories in them, and the dialogue is pretty good. It is nearer nature than you will find it in works of greater pretension. Here a carpenter talks something like a carpenter, and a footman something like a footman, and a factory-girl something like a girl employed in a factory. They don't all talk book—you will be able to read them. Begin with this one, 'The Wages of Sin are Death.' Good-by!" And with these words and a kind smile he left the cell.

"From the chaplain, sir," said Evans to the governor, touching his hat.

"DEAR SIR—Will you be good enough to send me by the bearer a copy of the prison rules, especially those that treat of the punishments to be inflicted on prisoners? "I am, "Yours, etc."

Hawes had no sooner read this innocent-looking missive, than he burst out into a tide of execrations; he concluded by saying, "Tell him I have not got a spare copy; Mr. Jones will give him his."

This answer disappointed the chaplain sadly; for Mr. Jones had left the town, and was not expected to return for some days. The hostile spirit of the governor was evident in this reply. The chaplain felt he was at war, and his was an energetic but peace-loving nature. He paced the corridor, looking both thoughtful and sad. The rough Evans eyed him with interest, and he also fell into meditation and scratched his head, invariable concomitant of thought with Evans.

It was toward evening, and his reverence still paced the corridor, downhearted at opposition and wickedness, but not without hope, and full of lovely and charitable wishes for all his flock, when the melancholy Fry suddenly came out of a prisoner's cell radiant with joy.

"What is amiss?" asked the chaplain.

"This is the matter," said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of each suit. "A prisoner has been making these out of his tracts!"

"How could he do that?"

"Look here, sir. He has kept a little of his gruel till it turned to paste, and then he has pasted three or four leaves of the tracts together and dried them, and then cut them into cards."

"But the colors—how could he get them?"

"That is what beats me altogether; but some of these prisoners know more than the bench of bishops."

"More evil, I conclude you mean?"

"More of all sorts, sir. However, I am taking them to the governor, and he will fathom it, if any one can."

"Leave one red card and one black with me."

While Fry was gong the chaplain examined the cards with curiosity and that admiration of inventive resource which a superior mind cannot help feeling. There they were, a fine red deuce of hearts and a fine black four of spades—cards made without pasteboard and painted without paint. But how? that was the question. The chaplain entered upon this question with his usual zeal; but happening to reverse one of the cards, it was his fate to see on the back of it:

"THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH."

A Tract.

He reddened at the sight. Here was an affront! "The sulky brute could amuse himself cutting up my tracts!"

Presently the governor came up with his satellites.

"Take No. 19 out of his cell for punishment."

At this word the chaplain's short-lived anger began to cool. They brought Robinson out.

"So you have been at it again," cried the governor in threatening terms. "Now you will tell me where you got the paint to make these beauties with?"

No answer.

"Do you hear, ye sulky brute?"

No answer, but a glittering eye bent on Hawes.

"Put him in the jacket," cried Hawes with an oath.

Hodges and Fry laid each a hand upon the man's shoulder and walked him off.

"Stop!" cried Hawes suddenly; "his reverence is here, and he is not partial to the jacket."

The chaplain was innocent enough to make a graceful grateful bow to Hawes.

"Give him the dark cell for twenty-four hours," continued Hawes with a malicious grin.

The thief gave a cry of dismay and shook himself clear of the turnkeys.

"Anything but that," cried he with trembling voice.

"Oh! you have found your tongue, have you?"

"Any punishment but that," almost shrieked the despairing man. "Leave me my reason. You have robbed me of everything else. For pity's sake leave me my reason!"

The governor made a signal to the turnkeys; they stepped toward the thief. The thief sprung out of their way, his eye rolling wildly as if in search of escape. Seeing this the two turnkeys darted at him like bulldogs, one on each side. This time, instead of flying, the thief was observed to move his body in a springy way to meet them; with two motions rapid as light and almost contemporaneous, he caught Hodges between the eyes with his fist and drove his head like a battering-ram into Fry's belly. Smack! ooff! and the two powerful men went down like ninepins.

In a moment all the warders within sight or hearing came buzzing round, and Hodges and Fry got up, the latter bleeding; both staring confusedly. Seeing himself hemmed in, Robinson offered no further resistance. He plumped himself down on the ground and there sat, and they had to take him up and carry him to the dark cells. But as they were dragging him along by the shoulders he caught sight of the governor and chaplain looking down at him over the rails of Corridor B. At sight of the latter the thief wrenched himself free from his attendants, and screamed to him:

"Do you see this, you in the black coat? You that told us the other day you loved us, and now stand coolly there and see me taken to the black hole to be got ready for the mad-house? D'ye hear?"

"I hear you," replied the chaplain gravely and gently.

"You called us your brothers, you."

"I did, and do."

"Well, then, here is one of your brothers being taken to hell before your eyes. I go there a man, but I shall come out a beast, and that cowardly murderer by your side knows it, and you have not a word to say. That is all a poor fellow gets by being your brother. My curse on you all! butchers and hypocrites!"

"Give him twelve hours more for that," roared Hawes. "—— his eyes, I'll break him, —— him."

"Ah," yelled the thief, "you curse me, do you? d'ye hear that? The son of a —— appeals to Heaven against me! What? does this lump of dirt believe there is a God? Then there must be one." Then suddenly flinging himself on his knees, he cried, "If there is a God who pities them that suffer, I cry to Him on my knees to torture you as you torture us. May your name be shame, may your life be pain, and your death loathsome! May your skin rot from your flesh, your flesh from your bones, your bones from your body, and your soul split forever on the rock of damnation!"

"Take him away," yelled Hawes, white as a sheet.

They tore him away by force, still threatening his persecutor with outstretched hand and raging voice and blazing eyes, and flung him into the dark dungeon.

"Cool yourself there, ye varmint," said Fry spitefully. Even his flesh crept at the man's blasphemies.

Meantime, the chaplain had buried his face in his hands, and trembled like a woman at the frightful blasphemies and passions of these two sinners.

"I'll make this place hell to him. He shan't need to go elsewhere," muttered Hawes aloud between his clinched teeth.

The chaplain groaned.

The governor heard him and turned on him: "Well, parson, you see he doesn't thank you for interfering between him and me. He would rather have had an hour or two of the jacket and have done with it."

The chaplain sighed. He felt weighed down in spirit by the wickedness both of Hawes and of Robinson. He saw it was in vain at that moment to try to soften the former in favor of the latter. He moved slowly away. Hawes eyed him sneeringly.

"He is down upon his luck," thought Hawes; "his own fault for interfering with me. I liked the man well enough, and showed it, if he hadn't been a fool and put his nose into my business."

Half an hour had scarce elapsed when the chaplain came back.

"Mr. Hawes, I come to you as a petitioner."

"Indeed!" said Hawes, with a supercilious sneer very hard to bear.

The other would not notice it. "Pray, do not think I side with a refractory prisoner if I beg you, not to countermand, but to modify Robinson's punishment."

"What for?"

"Because he cannot bear so many hours of the dark cell."

"Nonsense, sir."

"Is it too much to ask that you will give him six hours a day for four days instead of twenty-four at a stretch?"

"I don't know whether it is too much for you to ask. I should say by what I see of you that nothing is; but it is too much for me to grant. The man has earned punishment; he has got it, and you have nothing to do with it at all."

"Yes, I have the care of his soul, and how can I do his soul good if he loses his reason?"

"Stuff! his reason's safe enough, what little he has."

"Do not say stuff! Do not be rash where the stake is so great, or confident where you have no knowledge. You have never been in the dark cell, Mr. Hawes; I have, and I assure you it tried my nerves to the uttermost. I had many advantages over this poor man. I went in of my own accord, animated by a desire of knowledge, supported by the consciousness of right, my memory enriched by the reading of five-and-twenty years, on which I could draw in the absence of external objects; yet so dreadful was the place that, had I not been fortified by communion with my omnipresent God, I do think my reason would have suffered in that thick darkness and solitude. I repeated thousands of lines of Homer, Virgil and the Greek dramatists; then I came to Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo; then I tried to think of a text and compose a sermon; but the minutes seemed hours, leaden hours, and they weighed my head down and my heart down, and so did the Egyptian darkness, till I sought refuge in prayer, and there I found it."

"You pulled through it and so will he; and now I think of it, it is too slight a punishment to give a refractory, blaspheming villain no worse than a pious gentleman took on him for sport," sneered Hawes. "You heard his language to me, the blaspheming dog?"

"I did! I did! and therefore pray you to pity his sinful soul, exasperated by the severities he has already undergone. Oh, sir! the wicked are more to be pitied than the good; and the good can endure trials that wreck the wicked. I would rather see a righteous man thrown into that dismal dungeon than this poor blaspheming sinner."

"The deuce you would!"

"For the righteous man has a strong tower that the sinner lacks. He is fit to battle with solitude and fearful darkness; an unseen light shines upon his soul, an unseen hand sustains him. The darkness is no darkness to him, for the Sun of righteousness is nigh. In the deep solitude he is not alone, for good angels whisper by his side. 'Yea, though he walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet shall he fear no evil, for God is with him; his rod and his staff they comfort him.' The wicked have not this comfort. To them darkness and solitude must be too horrible. Satan—not God—is their companion. The ghosts of their past crimes rise and swell the present horror. Remorse and despair are added to the double gloom of solitude and darkness. You don't know what you are doing when you shut up a poor lost sinner of excitable temperament in that dreadful hole. It is a wild experiment on a human frame. Pray be advised, pray be warned, pray let your heart be softened and punish the man as he deserves—but do not destroy him! oh, do not! do not destroy him!"

Up to this moment Hawes had worn a quiet, malicious grin. At last his rage broke through this veil. He turned round black as night upon the chaplain, who was bending toward him in earnest gasping yet sweet and gentle supplication.

"The vagabond insulted me before all my servants, and that is why you take his part. He would send me to hell if he had the upper hand. I've got the upper hand, and so he shall taste it instead of me, till he goes down on his marrowbones to me with my foot on his viper's tongue. —— him!"

"Oh! do not curse him, above all now that he is in trouble and defenseless."

"Let me alone, sir, and I'll let you," retorted Hawes savagely. "If I curse him you can pray for him. I don't hinder you. Good-night;" and Mr. Hawes turned his back very rudely.

"I will pray for him—and for you!"

"Ugh!"

So then the chaplain retired sorrowfully to his private room, and here, sustained no longer by action, his high-tuned nature gave way. A cold languor came over him. He locked the door that no one might see his weakness, and then, succumbing to nature, he fell first into a sickness and then into a trembling, and more than once hysterical tears gushed from his eyes in the temporary prostration of his spirit and his powers.

Such are the great. Men know their feats but not their struggles!

Meantime Robinson lay in the dark cell with a morsel of bread and water, and no bed or chair, that hunger and unrest might co-operate with darkness and solitude to his hurt. To this horrid abode it is now our fate to follow a thief and a blasphemer. We must pass his gloomy portal, over which might have been inscribed what Dante has written over the gates of hell:

"ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE—ABANDON HOPE!!"

At six o'clock Robinson was thrust in, and his pittance of bread and water with him; the door, which fitted like mosaic, was closed. The steps retreated carrying away hope and human kind; there was silence, and the man shivered in the thick black air that seemed a fluid, not an atmosphere.

When the door closed his heart was yet beating with rage and wild desire of vengeance. He nursed this rage as long as he could, but the thick darkness soon cooled him and cowed him. He sat down upon the floor, he ate his pittance very slowly, two mouthfuls a minute. "I will be an hour eating it," said he, "and then an hour will have passed." He thought he was an hour eating it, but in reality he was scarce twenty minutes. The blackness seemed to smother him. "I will shut it out," said he. He took out his handkerchief and wrapped his head in it. "What a weak fool I am," cried he, "when we are asleep it does not matter to us light or dark; I will go to sleep." He lay down, his head still wrapped up, and tried to sleep. So passed the first hour.

Second hour. He rose from the stone floor after a vain attempt to sleep. "Oh, no!" cried he, "sleep is for those who are well and happy, and who could enjoy themselves as well awake; it won't come to me to save a poor wretch from despair. I must tire myself, and I am too cold to sleep. Here goes for a warm." He groped to the wall, and keeping his hand on it went round and round like a caged tiger. "Hawes hopes to drive me to Bedlam. I'll do the best I can for myself to spite him. May he lie in a place narrower than this, and almost as dark, with his jaw down and his toes up before the year is out, curse him!" But the poor wretch's curses quavered away into sobs and tears. "Oh, what have I done to be used so as I am here? They drive me to despair, then drive me to hell for despairing. Patience, or I shall go mad. Patience! Patience!" This hour was passed cursing and weeping and groping for warmth and fatigue—in vain.

Third hour. The man sat rocking himself to and fro, trying not to think of anything. For now the past, too, was coming with all its weight upon him; every minute he started up as if an adder had stung him; crawled about his cell seeking refuge in motion and finding none; then he threw himself on the floor and struggled for sleep. Sleep would not come so sought; and now his spirits were quite cowed. He would cringe to Hawes; he would lick the dust at his feet to get out of this horrible place; who could he get to go and tell the governor he was penitent. He listened at the door; he rapped; no one came. He put his ear to the ground and listened; no sound—blackness, silence, solitude. "They have left me here to die," shrieked the despairing man, and he flung himself on the floor and writhed upon the hard stone. "It must be morning, and no one comes near me; this is my tomb!" Fear came upon him, and trembling and a cold sweat bedewed his limbs; and once more the past rushed over him with tenfold force; days of happiness and comparative innocence now forfeited forever. His whole life whirled round before his eyes in a panorama, scene dissolving into scene with inconceivable rapidity; thus passed more than two hours; and now remorse and memory concentrated themselves on one dark spot in this man's history. "She is in the tomb," cried he, "and all through me, and that is why I am here. This is my grave. Do you see me, Mary?—she is here. The spirits of the dead can go anywhere." Then he trembled and cried for help. Oh! for a human voice or a human footstep!—none. His nerves and senses were now shaken. He cried aloud most piteously for help. "Mr. Fry, Mr. Hodges, help! help! help! The cell is full of the dead, and devils are buzzing round me waiting to carry me away—they won't wait much longer." He fancied something supernatural passed him like a wind. He struck wildly at it. He flung himself madly against the door to escape it; he fell back bruised and bleeding and lay a while in stupor.

Sixth hour. Robinson was going mad. The blackness and solitude and silence and remorse and despair were more than his excitable nature could bear any longer. He prayed Hawes to come and abuse him. He prayed Fry to bring the jacket to him. "Let me but see a man, or hear a man!" He screamed, and cursed, and prayed, and dashed himself on the ground and ran round the cell wounding his hands and his face. Suddenly he turned deadly calm. He saw he was going mad—better die than so—"I shall be a beast soon—I will die a man"—he tore down his collar—he had on cotton stockings; he took one off—he tied it in a loose knot round his naked throat—he took a firm hold with each hand.

And now he was quiet and sorrowed calmly. A man to die in the prime of life for want of a little light and a word from a human creature to keep him from madness.

Then as the thought returned, clinching his teeth, he gathered the ends of the stocking and prepared with one fierce pull to save his shaken reason and end his miserable days. Now at this awful moment, While his hands griped convulsively the means of death, a quiet tap on the outside of the cell door suddenly rang through the dead stillness, and a moment after a human word forced its way into the cave of madness and death—

"BROTHER!"

When this strange word pierced the thick door and came into the hell-cave, feeble as though wafted over water from a distance, yet distinct as a bell and bright as a sunbeam, Robinson started, and quaked with fear and doubt. Did it come from the grave, that unearthly tone and word?

Still holding the ends of the stocking, he cried out wildly in a loud but quavering voice:

"Who—o—o calls Thomas Sinclair brother?" The distant voice rang back—

"Francis Eden!"

"Ah!—where are you, Francis Eden?"

"Here! within a hand's-breadth of you;" and Mr. Eden struck the door. "Here!"

"There! are you there?" and Robinson struck the door on his side.

"Yes, here!"

"Ha! don't go away, pray don't go away!"

"I don't mean to. Take courage—calm your fears—a brother is close by you!"

"A brother!—again! now I know who it must be, but there is no telling voices here."

"What were you doing?"

"What was I doing? Oh! don't ask me—I was going mad—where are you?"

"Here!" (rap).

"And I am here close opposite; you won't go away yet a while?"

"Not till you bid me—compose yourself—do you hear me?—calm yourself, compose yourself."

"I will try, sir!—thank you, sir—I will try. What o'clock is it?"

"Half-past twelve."

"Night or day?"

"Night."

"Friday night, or Saturday?"

"Thursday."

"How came you to be in the prison at this hour?"

"I was anxious about you."

"You were what?"

"Fearful about you."

"What! did you give up your sleep only to see after me?"

"Are you not glad I came?"

"Is a shipwrecked sailor glad when a rope is flung him? I hold on to life and reason by you!"

"Is not this better than sleeping?—Did you speak?"

"No! I am thinking! I am trying to make you out. Were you ever a p—— (hum)?"

"Was I ever what? the door is so thick!"

"Oh! nothing, sir; you seem to know what a poor fellow suffers in the dark cell."

"I have been in it!"

"Whee-ugh-whee!—what a shame! what did they put you in for?"

"They didn't put me in. I went in."

"The devil you did!" muttered the immured.

"What? Speak out."

"Nothing, your reverence," bawled Robinson. "Why did you go into such a cur—into such a hole?"

"It was my duty to know what a fellow-creature suffers there, lest, through inexperience, I might be cruel. Ignorance is the mother of cruelty!"

"I hear you, sir.

"And cruelty is a fearful crime in His eyes, whose servant I am."

"I am thinking, sir; I am putting two or three things together—I see—"

"Speak more slowly and articulately."

"I will; I see what you are now—you are a Christian."

"I hope so!"

"I might have guessed as much, and I did suspect it; but I couldn't know, I had nothing to go by. I never fell in with a Christian before."

"Where did you go to look for them?" asked Mr. Eden, his mouth twitching.

"I have been in many countries, and my eyes open; and I've heard and read of Christians, and I've met hypocrites; but never met a living Christian till to-night." Then, after a pause, "Sir, I want to apologize to you!"

"What for!"

"For my ignorant and ungrateful conduct to you in my cell."

"Let bygones be bygones!"

"Could you forgive me, sir?"

"You punished yourself, not me; I forgive you."

"Thank you."

Robinson was silent.

After a pause Mr. Eden tapped.

"What are you doing?"

"I am thinking over your goodness to me."

"Are you better now?"

"That I am. The place was a tomb; since you came it is only a closet. I can't see your face—I feel it, though; and your voice is music to me. Have you nothing to say to me, sir?"

"I have many things to say to you; but this is not the time. I want you to sleep."

"Why, sir?"

"Sleep is the balm of mind and body—you need sleep."

"And you, sir?"

"I shall sit here."

"You will take your death of cold."

"No, I have my greatcoat."

There was a long pause.

Robinson tapped. "Sir, grant me a favor."

"What is it?"

"Go home to your bed."

"What, leave you?"

"Yes."

"Shall you not miss me?"

"Yes, sir, but you must go. The words you have spoken will stay with me while you are gone."

"I shall stay."

"No, sir, no! I can't bear it—it isn't fair!"

"What do you mean?"

"It isn't fair that a gentleman like you should be kept shivering at an unfortunate man's door like me. I am not quite good for nothing, sir, and this will disgrace me in my own eyes."

"I am on the best side of the door; don't trouble your head about me."

"I shouldn't, sir, if you had not about me—but kindness begets kindness. Go to your comfortable bed."

Mr. Eden hesitated.

"You will make me more unhappy than I am, if you stay here in the cold."

Now, at the beginning of this argument Mr. Eden was determined not to go; but on reflection he made up his mind to, for this reason: "This," said he to himself, "is an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial in this poor fellow. I must not balk it, for it will be good for his soul; it is a step on the right road. This good and, I might say, noble act is a foundation-stone on which I ought to try and build an honest man and a Christian."

"Well, then, as you are so considerate I will go."

"Thank you."

"Can I do nothing for you before I go?"

"No, sir; you have done all a man can; yes, you can do something—you spoke a word to me when you came; it is a word I am not worthy of, but still if you could leave me that word it would be a companion for me."

"Brother!"

"Thank you."

When he heard Mr. Eden's steps grow fainter and fainter, and at last inaudible, Robinson groaned; the darkness turned blacker and the solitude more desolate than ever.

Mr. Eden paced the corridors in meditation. "It is never too late to mend!" he said. "This man seemed an unredeemable brute, yet his heart was to be touched by persevering kindness; and once touched, how much of goodness left in his fallen nature—genuine gratitude, and even the embers of self-respect. 'I hate myself for my conduct in the cell; it would disgrace me in my own eyes if I let you shiver at my door.' Poor fellow, my heart yearns toward him for that. 'Go, or you will make me more unhappy.' Why, that was real delicacy. I must not let him suffer for it. In an hour I will go back to him. If he is asleep, well and good; if not, there I stay till morning."

He went to his room and worked. The hour soon glided by to him; not so to the poor prisoner. At two in the morning Mr. Eden came softly back to the dark cell to see whether Robinson was asleep. He scratched the door with a key. A loud, unsteady voice cried out, "What is that?"

"It is I, brother."

"Why are you not in your bed?"

"I couldn't sleep for anxiety. Come, chat with me till you feel sleepy. How did you color those cards?"

"I found a coal and a bit of brick in the yard. I pounded them and mixed them with water and laid them on with a brush I had made and hid."

"Very ingenious! Are you cold?"

"No."

"Because your voice trembles."

"Does it?"

"What is the matter?"

"Can't you guess?"

"No! But I remember you used to tremble when I spoke to you in the cell. Why was that? Have your nerves been shaken by ill-usage, my poor fellow?"

"Oh, no! it is not that."

"Tell me, then!"

"Oh, sir! you know all a poor fellow feels. You can guess what made me tremble, and makes me tremble now, like an aspen I do."

"No, indeed! pray tell me! Are we not friends?"

"The best ever I had, or ever shall."

"Then tell me."

I'll try; but it is a long story, and the door is so thick."

"Ah! but I hear you better now. I have got used to your voice.

"Well, sir; but I've no words to speak to you as I ought. Why did I use to tremble when you used to speak kind to me? Sir, when I first came here I hadn't a bad heart. I was a felon, but I was a man. They turned me to a brute by cruelty and wrong. You came too late, sir. It wasn't Tom Robinson you found in that cell. I had got to think all men were devils They poisoned my soul! I hated God and man!

"The very chaplain before you said good, kind words in church, but out of it he was Hawes' tool! Then you came and spoke good, kind words. My heart ran to meet them; then it drew back all shivering and said, this is a hypocrite, too! I was a fool and a villain to think so for a moment, and perhaps I didn't at bottom, but I was turned to gall.

"Oh, sir! you don't know what it is to lose hope, to find out that do what you will you can't be right, can't escape abuse and hatred and torture. Treat a man like a dog and you make him one!

"But you came. Your voice, your face, your eye were all pity and kindness. I hoped, but I was afraid to hope! I had seen but two things—butchers and hypocrites. Then I had sworn in my despair never to speak again, and I wouldn't speak to you. Fool! How kind and patient you were. Sir, once when you left me you sighed as you closed the cell door. I came after you to beg your pardon, when it was too late; indeed I did, upon my honor. And when you would rub the ointment on my throat in spite of my ingratitude, I could have worshipped you; but my pride held me back like an iron hand. Why did I tremble? that was the devil and my better part fighting inside me for the upper hand. And another thing, I did not dare speak to you. I felt that if I did I should give way altogether, like a woman or a child. I feel so now. For, oh! can't you guess what it must be to a poor fellow when all the rest are savage as wolves and one is kind as a woman? Oh! you have been a friend to me. You don't know all you have done. You have saved my life. When you came here a stocking was knotted round my throat; a minute later the man you call your brother—God bless you—would have been no more. There, I never meant you should know that, and now it has slipped out. My benefactor! my kind friend! my angel! for you are an angel and not a man. What can I do to show you what I feel? What can I say? There, I tremble all over now as I did then. I'm choking for words, and the cruel, thick door keeps me from you. I want to put my neck under your foot, for I can't speak. All I say isn't worth a button. Words! words! words! give me words that mean something. They shan't keep me from you, they shan't! they shan't! My stubborn heart was between us once, now there is only a door. Give me your hand! give me your hand before my heart bursts."

"There! there!"

"Hold it there!"

"Yes! yes!"

"My lips are here close opposite it. I am kissing your dear hand. There! there! there! I bless you! I love you! I adore you! I am kissing your hand, and I am on my knees blessing you and kissing. Oh, my heart! my heart! my heart!"

There was a long silence, disturbed only by sobs that broke upon the night from the black cell. Mr. Eden leaned against the door with his hand in the same place; the prisoner kissed the spot from time to time.

"Your reverence is crying, too!" was the first word spoken, very gently.

"How do you know?"

"You don't speak, and my heart tells me you are shedding a tear for me; there was only that left to do for me."

Then there was another silence, and true it was that the good man and the bad man mingled some tears through the massy door. These two hearts pierced it, and went to and fro through it, and melted in spite of it, and defied and utterly defeated it.

"Did you speak, dear sir?"

"No! not for the world! Weep on, my poor sinning, suffering brother. Heaven sends you this blessed rain; let it drop quietly on your parched soul, refresh you, and shed peace on your troubled heart. Drop, gentle dew from heaven, upon his spirit; prepare the dry soul for the good seed!"

And so the bad man wept abundantly; to him old long-dried sources of tender feeling were now unlocked by Christian love and pity.

The good man shed a gentle tear or two of sympathy—of sorrow, too, to find so much goodness had been shut up, driven in and wellnigh quenched forever in the poor thief.

To both these holy drops were as the dew of Hermon on their souls.

O lacryrnarum fons tenero sacros Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater Felix in imo qui scatentem Pectore te pia Nynmpha sensit.

Robinson was the first to break silence.

"Go home, sir, now; you have done your work, you have saved me. I feel at peace. I could sleep. You need not fear to leave me now."

"I shall sit here until you are asleep, and then I will go. Do you hear this?" and he scratched the door with his key.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, when I do so and you do not tap in reply I shall know you are asleep."

Robinson, whose heart was now so calmed, felt his eyes get heavier and heavier. After a while he spoke to Mr. Eden but received no reply.

"Perhaps he is dozing," thought Robinson. "I won't disturb him."

Then he composed himself, lying close to the door to be near his friend.

After a while Mr. Eden scratched the door with his key. There was no answer; then he rose softly and went to his own room.

Robinson slept—slept like an infant after this feverish day. His body lay still in a hole dark and almost as narrow as the grave, but his spirit had broken prison. Tired nature's sweet restorer descended like a dove upon his wet eyelids, and fanned him with her downy wings, and bedewed the hot heart and smarting limbs with her soothing, vivifying balm.

At six o'clock Evans went and opened Robinson's cell door. He was on the ground sleeping, with a placid smile on his face. Evans looked down at him with a puzzled air. While contemplating him he was joined by Fry.

"Ugh!" grunted that worthy, "seems to agree with him." And he went off and told Hawes.

Directly after chapel, which he was not allowed to attend, came an order to take Robinson out of the dark cell and put him on the crank.

The disciplinarian, defeated in his attempt on Robinson, was compensated by a rare stroke of good fortune—a case of real refractoriness even this was not perfect, but it answered every purpose.

In one of the labor cells they found a prisoner seated with the utmost coolness across the handle of his crank. He welcomed his visitants with a smile, and volunteered a piece of information—"It is all right."

Now it couldn't be all right, for it was impossible he could have done his work in the time. Hawes looked at the face of the crank to see how much had been done, and lo! the face was broken and the index had disappeared. As Mr. Hawes examined the face of the crank, the prisoner leered at him with a mighty silly cunning.

This personage's name was Carter; it may be as well to explain him. Go into any large English jail on any day in any year you like, you shall find there two or three prisoners who have no business to be in such a place at all—half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatize until civilization shall come and correct them.

These imbeciles, if the nation itself was not both half-witted and a thoughtless, ignorant dunce in all matters relating to such a trifle (Heaven forgive us!) as its prisons, would be taken to the light not plunged into darkness; would not be shut up alone with their no-minds to accumulate the stupidity that has undone them, but forced into collision with better understandings; would not be closeted in a jail, but in a mild asylum with a school attached.

The offenses of these creatures is seldom theft, hardly ever violence. This idiot was sentenced to two years' separate confinement for being the handle with which two knaves had passed base coin. The same day the same tribunal sentenced a scoundrel who was not an idiot, and had beaten and kicked his wife to the edge of the grave—to fourteen years' imprisonment? no—to four months.

Mr. Carter had observed that Fry looked at a long iron needle on the face of the crank and that when he had been lazy somehow this needle pointed out the fact to Fry. He could not understand it, but then the world was brimful of things he could not understand one bit. It was no use standing idle till he could comprehend rerum naturam—bother it. In short, Mr. Carter did what is a dangerous thing for people in his condition to do, he cogitated, and the result of this unfamiliar process was that he broke the glass of the crank face, took out the index, shied the pieces of glass carefully over the wall, secreted the needle, took about ten turns of the crank, and then left off and sat down, exulting secretly.

When they came, as usual, and went to consult the accusing needle, he chuckled and leered with foolish cunning. But his chuckle died away into a most doleful quaver when he found himself surrounded, jacketed, strapped and collared. He struggled furiously at first, like some wild animal in a net; and when resistance was hopeless the poor, half-witted creature lifted up his voice and uttered loud, wild-beast cries of pain and terror that rang through the vast prison.

These horrible cries brought all the warders to the spot, and Mr. Eden. There he found Carter howling, and Hawes in front of him, cursing and threatening him with destruction if he did not hold his noise.

He might as well have suspended a dog from a branch by the hind leg and told him he mustn't howl.

This sight drove a knife through Mr. Eden's heart. He stood among them white as a sheet. He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity. His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy the inquisitors, all but Hawes.

"Hold your noise, ye howling brute, or I'll"—and he clapped his hand before Carter's mouth.

Carter seized his thumb with his teeth and bit it to the bone. Hawes yelled with pain and strove furiously to get his hand away, but Carter held it like a tiger. Hawes capered with agony and yelled again. The first to come to his relief was Mr. Eden. He was at the biped's side in a moment, and pinched his nose. Now, as his lungs were puffing like a blacksmith's bellows, his mouth flew open the moment the other breathing-hole was stopped, and Hawes got his bleeding hand away.

He held it with the other and shook it, and moaned dismally, like a great girl; but suddenly looking up he saw a half grin upon the faces of his myrmidons.

For the contrast of a man telling another who was in pain not to make a row, and the next moment making an abominable row himself for no better reason, was funny.

For all this occurred ten times quicker in action than in relation.

Mr. Hawes's conversion to noise came rapidly in a single sentence, after this fashion:

"—— you! hold your infernal noise. Oh! Augh! Ah! E E! E E! Aah! Oh! Oh!; E E!E E! O O!O O! O O! O O! O O!O O!"

So Fry and Hodges and Evans and Davis grinned.

For all these men had learned from Hawes to laugh at pain—(another's). One man alone did not even smile. He was an observer, and did not expect any one to be great at bearing pain who was rash in inflicting it; moreover, he suffered with all who suffer. He was sorry for the pilloried biped, and sorry for the bitten brute.

He then gave them another lesson. "All you want the poor thing to do is to suffer in silence. Withdraw twenty yards from him." He set the example by retreating; the others, Hawes included, being off their guard, obeyed mechanically the superior spirit.

Carter's cries died away into a whimpering moan. The turnkeys looked at one another, and with a sort of commencement of respect at Mr. Eden.

"Parson knows more than we do."

Hawes interrupted this savagely.

"Ye fools! couldn't you see it was the sight of your ugly faces made him roar, not the jacket? Keep him there till further orders;" and he went off to plaster his wounded hand.

Mr. Eden sat down and covered his face. He was as miserable as this vile world can make a man who lives for a better. The good work he was upon was so difficult in itself, and those who ought to have helped fought against him.

When with intelligence, pain and labor he had built up a little good, Hawes was sure to come and knock it down again; and this was the way to break his heart.

He had been taking such pains with this poor biped; he had played round his feeble understanding to find by what door a little wisdom and goodness could be made to enter him. At last he had found that pictures pleased him and excited him, and awakened all the intelligence he had.

Mr. Eden had a vast collection of engravings and photographs. His plan with Carter was to show him some engraving presenting a fact or anecdote. First he would put under his eyes a cruel or unjust action. He would point out the signs of suffering in one of the figures. Carter would understand this because he saw it. Then Mr. Eden would excite his sympathy. "Poor so and so!" would Mr. Eden say in a pitying voice. "Poor so and so!" would biped Carter echo. After several easy lessons he would find him a picture of some more moderate injustice, and so raise the shadow of a difficulty and draw a little upon Carter's understanding as well as sympathy. Then would come pictures of charity, of benevolence and other good actions. These and their effects upon the several figures Carter was invited to admire, and so on to a score of topics. The first thing was to make Carter think and talk, which he did in the happy-go-lucky way of his class, uttering nine mighty simple remarks, and then a bit of superlative wisdom, or something that sounded like it. And when he had shot his random bolts, Mr. Eden would begin and treat each picture as a text, and utter much wisdom on it in simple words.

He found Carter's mind in a state of actual lethargy. He got it out of that; he created an excitement and kept it up. He got at his little bit of mind through his senses. Honor to all the great arts! The limit to their beauty and their usefulness has never yet been found and never will. Painting was the golden key this thinker held to the Bramah lock of an imbecile's understanding the ponderous wards were beginning to revolve—when a blockhead came and did his best to hamper the lock.

In English, Eden was gradually making the biped a man: comes Hawes and turns him a brute. The whimpering moans of Carter were thoroughly animal, and the poor biped's degradation as well as his suffering made Mr. Eden wretched.

To-day for the first time the chaplain saw a prisoner crucified without suffering that peculiar physical weakness which I have more than once noticed. Poor soul, he was so pleased at this that he thanked Heaven for curing him of that contemptible infirmity, so he called it. But he had to pay for this victory. He never felt so sick at heart as now. He turned for relief to the duties he had in his zeal added to a chaplain's acknowledged routine. He visited his rooms and all his rational work-people.

The sight of all the good he was doing by teaching the sweets of anti-theft was always a cordial to him.

Almost the last cell he visited was Thomas Robinson's. The man had been fretting and worrying himself to know why he did not come before. As soon as the door was opened he took an eager step to meet him, then stopped irresolutely, and blushed and beamed with pleasure mixed with a certain confusion. He looked volumes but waited out of respect for his reverence to address him.

Mr. Eden held out his hand to him with a frank manner and kind smile. At this Robinson tried to speak but could only stammer; something seemed to rise in his throat and block up the exit of words.

"Come," said Mr. Eden, "no more of that; be composed, and I will sit down, for I am tired."

Robinson brought him his stool, and Mr. Eden sat down.

They conversed, and after some kind inquiries, Mr. Eden came to the grand purport of this visit, which, to the surprise and annoyance of Robinson, was to reprobate severely the curses and blasphemies he had uttered as they were dragging him to the dark cell. And so threatening and severe was Mr. Eden, that at last poor Robinson whined out:

"Sir, you will make me wish I was in the dark cell again, for then you took my part; now you are against me."

"There is a time for everything under the sun. When you were in the dark cell, consolation and indulgence were the best things for your soul, and I gave them you as well as I could. You are not in the dark cell now, and, out of the same love for you, I tell you that if God took you this night the curses you uttered yesterday would destroy you to all eternity."

"I hope not, your reverence!"

"Away with delusive hopes, they war against the soul. I tell you those curses that came from a tongue set on fire of hell have placed you under the ban of Heaven. Are you not this Hawes's brother, his brother every way—two unforgiven sinners?"

"Yes, sir," said Robinson, truckling, "of course I know I am a great sinner, a desperate sinner, not worthy to be in your reverence's company. But I hope," he added, with sudden sincerity and spirit, "you don't think I am such an out-and-out scoundrel as that Hawes."

"Mr. Hawes would tell me you are the scoundrel and he a zealous servant of morality and order; but these comparisons are out of place. I am now deferring not to the world's judgment but to a higher, in whose eye Mr. Hawes and you stand on a level—two unforgiven sinners; if not forgiven you will both perish everlastingly, and to be forgiven you must forgive. God is very forgiving—He forgives the best of us a thousand vile offenses. But He never forgives unconditionally. His terms are our repentance and our forgiveness of those who offend us one-millionth part as deeply as we offend Him. Therefore in praying against Hawes you have prayed against yourself. Give me your slate. No; take it yourself. Write—"

Robinson took his pencil with alacrity. He wrote a beautiful hand, and wanted to show off this accomplishment to his reverence.

"Forgive us our sins as we forgive them that trespass against us.'"

"It is down, sir."

"Now particularize."

"Particularize, your reverence?"

"Write under 'us' 'our' and 'we,' 'me',' my' and 'I'; respectively."

"All right, sir."

"Now under 'them' write 'Mr. Hawes.'"

"Ugh! Yes, your reverence, 'Mr. Hawes.'"

"And under the last four words write, 'his cruelty to me.'"

This was wormwood to Mr. Robinson. "'His cruelty to me!'"

"Now read your work out."

"'Forgive me my sins as I forgive Mr. Hawes his cruelty to me.'"

"Now ponder over those words. Keep them before your eye here, and try at least and bow your stubborn heart to them. Fall on them and be broken, or they will fall on you and grind you to powder." He concluded in a terrible tone; then, seeing Robinson abashed, more from a notion he was in a rage with him than from any deeper sentiment, he bade him farewell kindly as ever.

"I know," said he, "I have given you a hard task. We can all gabble the Lord's Prayer, but how few have ever prayed it! But at least try, my poor soul, and I will set you an example. I will pray for my brother Robinson and my brother Hawes, and I shall pray for them all the more warmly that at present one is a blaspheming thief and the other a pitiless blockhead."

The next day being Sunday, Mr. Eden preached two sermons that many will remember all their lives. The first was against theft and all the shades of dishonesty. I give a few of his topics. The dry bones he covered with flesh and blood and beauty. The tendency of theft was to destroy all moral and social good. For were it once to prevail so far as to make property insecure, industry would lose heart, enterprise and frugality be crushed, and at last the honest turn thieves in self-defense. Nearly every act of theft had a baneful influence on the person robbed.

Here he quoted by name instances of industrious, frugal persons, whose savings having been stolen, they had lost courage and good habits of years' standing, and had ended ill. Then he gave them a simile. These great crimes are like great trunk railways. They create many smaller ones. Some flow into them, some out of them. Drunkenness generally precedes an act of theft; drunkenness always follows it; lies flow from it in streams, and perjury rushes to its defense.

It breeds, too, other vices that punish it, but never cure it—prodigality and general loose living. The thief is never the richer by this vile act which impoverishes his victim; for the money obtained by this crime is wasted in others. The folly of theft; its ill economy. What high qualities are laid out to their greatest disadvantage by the thief; acuteness, watchfulness, sagacity, determination, tact. These virtues, coupled with integrity, enrich thousands every year. How many thieves do they enrich? How many thieves are a shilling a year the better for the hundreds of pounds that come dishonestly into their hands.

"In —— Jail (Mr. Lepel's), there is now a family that have stolen, first and last, property worth eighteen thousand pounds. The entire possessions of this family are now two pair of shoes. The clothes they stand in belong to Government; their own had to be burned, so foul were they. Eighteen thousand pounds had they stolen—to be beggars; and this is the rule, not the exception, as you all know. Why is this your fate and your end? Because a mightier power than man's has determined that thieving shall not thrive. The curse of God is upon theft!"

Then came life-like pictures of the honest man and the thief. The one with an eye that faced you, with a conscious dignity and often a cheerful countenance; the other with a shrinking eye, a conscious meanness, and never with a smile from the heart; sordid, sly and unhappy—for theft is misery. No wonder this crime degrades a man when it degrades the very animals; Look at a dog who has stolen. Before this, when he met his master or any human friend he used to run up to greet them with wagging tail and sparkling eye. Now see him. At sight of any man he crawls meanly away, with cowering figure and eye askant, the living image of the filthy sin he has committed. He feels he has no longer a right to greet a man, for he is a thief.

And here the preacher gathered images, facts and satire, and hurled a crushing hailstorm of scorn upon the sordid sin. Then he attacked the present situation (his invariable custom).

"Not all the inmates of a jail were equally guilty on their arrival there. A large proportion of felons were orphans or illegitimate children; others, still more unfortunate, were the children of criminals who had taught them crime from their cradles. Great excuses were to be made for the general mass of criminals; excuses that the ignorant, shallow world could not be expected to make; but the balance of the Sanctuary is not like the world's clumsy balance; it weighs all men to a hair. Excuses will be made for many of you in heaven up to a certain point. And what is that point? The day of your entrance into prison. But now plead no more the ill example of parents and friends, for here you are cut off from it.

"Plead no more that you cannot read, for here you have been taught to read.

"Plead no more the dreadful power of vicious habits that began when you were unguarded, for those habits have now been cut away from you by force and better habits substituted.