It Is Never Too Late to Mend by Charles Reade (page 8)

governor?”

Prisoner. “Well, sir! the black-cell, bread and water, and none of that; took away my gas once or twice, but generally it was the punishment jacket.”

Mr. Lacy. “Hum! the punishment jacket.”

Mr. Eden. “How long since you had the punishment jacket?”

Prisoner. “No longer than yesterday.”

Mr. Eden. “Strip, my man, and let us look at your back.”

The prisoner stripped and showed his back, striped livid and red by the cutting straps.

Mr. Lacy gave a start, but the next moment he resumed his official composure, and at this juncture Mr. Hawes bustled into the cell and fixed his eye on the prisoner.

“What are you doing?” said he, eying the man.

“The gentleman made me strip, sir,” said the prisoner with an ill-used air.

“Have you any complaint to make against me?”

“No, sir!”

“Then what have you been humbugging us for all this time,” cried Mr. Williams contemptuously.

“For instance,” cried Mr. Eden in the same tone, glancing slyly at Mr. Lacy, “how dare you show us frightful wales upon your back when you know they only exist in your imagination–and mine.”

Mr. Lacy laughed. “That is true, he can’t retract his wales, and I shall be glad to know how they came there.” Here he made a note.

“I will show you by and by,” said Mr. Eden.

The next two cells they went to, the prisoners assured Mr. Lacy that they were treated like Mr. Hawes’s children.

“Well, sir!” said Lacy, with evident satisfaction, “what do you say to that?”

“I say–use your eyes.” And he wheeled the last prisoner to the light. “Look at this hollow eye and faded cheek; look at this trembling frame and feel this halting pulse. Here is a poor wretch crushed and quelled by cruelty till scarce a vestige of man is left. Look at him! here is an object to pretend to you that he has been kindly used. Poor wretch, his face gives the lie to his tongue, and my life on it his body confirms his face. Strip, my lad.”

Mr. Hawes interposed, and said it was cruel to make a prisoner strip to gratify curiosity. Mr. Eden laughed. “Come, strip,” said he; “the gentleman is waiting.” The prisoner reluctantly took off his coat, waistcoat and shirt, and displayed an emaciated person and several large livid stripes on his back. Mr. Lacy looked grave.

“Now, Mr. Lacy, you see the real reason why this humane gentleman did not like the prisoner to strip. Come to another. Before we go in to this one let me ask you one question: Do you think they will ever tell you the truth while Mr. Hawes’s eye is on them?”

“Hum! they certainly seem to stand in awe of Mr. Hawes.”

Hawes. “But, sir! you see how bitter the chaplain is against me. Where he is I ought to be if I am to have fair play.”

“Certainly, Mr. Hawes, certainly! that is but fair.”

Mr. Eden. “What are you in for?”

Prisoner. “Taking a gentleman’s wipe, gentlemen.”

Mr. Eden. “Have you been often punished?”

Prisoner. “Yes, your reverence! Why you know I have; now didn’t you save my life when they were starving me to death two months ago?”

Mr. Lacy. “How did he save your life?”

Prisoner. “Made ’em put me on the sick list, and put something into my poor belly.”

Mr. Lacy. “What state was the man in, Mr. Eden?”

Mr. Eden. “He was like a skeleton, and so weak that he could only speak two or three words at a time, and then had to stop a long while and recover strength to say two or three more. I did not think a human creature could be so near death and not die.”

Mr. Lacy. “And did you know the cause?”

Mr. Eden. “Frankly, I did not. I had not at that time fathomed all the horrors of this place.”

Mr. Lacy. “Did you tell the chaplain at the time you were starving?”

Prisoner. “No!”

Mr. Eden. “And why not?”

Mr. Hawes. “Simply because he never was starving.”

Prisoner. “Well! I’ll tell you, gentlemen. His reverence said to me, ‘My poor fellow, you are very ill–I must have you on the sick list directly,’ and then he went for the doctor. Now I knew if I got on the sick list they would fill my belly; so I said to myself, best let well alone. If I had told him it was only starvation he would not interfere, I thought.”

Mr. Lacy opened his eyes. Mr. Eden sighed.

Mr. Lacy. “You seem to have a poor opinion of her majesty’s officers.”

Prisoner. “Didn’t know him, you see–didn’t know his character; the humbug that was here before him would have let a poor fellow be kicked into his grave before his eyes, and not hold out a hand to save him.”

Mr. Lacy. “Let me understand you–were you kept without food?”

Prisoner. “I was a day and a half without any food at all.”

Mr. Lacy. “By whose orders?”

Prisoner. “By the governor’s there, and I was a week on a twopenny loaf once a day, and kept at hard work on that till I dropped. Ah, your reverence, I shall never forget your face. I should be under the sod now if it was not for you!”

Williams. “You rascal, the last time I was here you told me you never were so happy and comfortable.”

Prisoner. “Ha! ha! ha! ha! he! he! haw! haw! ho! I ask your pardon for laughing, sir; but you are so precious green. Why, if I had told you the truth then I shouldn’t be alive to talk to you now.”

“What, I should have murdered you, should I!” said Mr. Hawes, with a lofty sneer.

“Why you know you would, sir,” replied the prisoner firmly and respectfully, looking him full in the face before them all.

Mr. Lacy. “You don’t think so, or you would not take these liberties with him now.”

The prisoner cast a look of pity on Mr. Lacy.

“Well, you _are_ green–what, can’t you see that I am going out to-day? Do you think I’d be such a cully as to tell a pack of greenhorns like you the truth before a sharp hand like our governor, if I was in his power; no, my term of imprisonment expired at twelve o’clock to-day.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I’ll tell you, sir. Our governor always detains a prisoner for hours after the law sets him free. So then the poor fellow has not time to get back to his friends, so then he sleeps in the town, ten to one at a public-house; gets a glass, gets into bad company, and in a month or two comes back here. That is the move, sir. Bless you, they are so fond of us they don’t like to part with us for good and all.”

Mr. Lacy. “I do not for a moment believe, Mr. Hawes, that you have foreseen these consequences, but the detention of this man after twelve o’clock is clearly illegal, and you must liberate him on the instant.”

Mr. Hawes. “That I will, and I wish this had been pointed out to me before, but it was a custom of the prison before my time.”

Mr. Eden. “Evans, come this way, come in. How long have you been a turnkey here?”

Evans. “Four years, sir.”

Mr. Eden. “Do you happen to remember the practice of the late governor with respect to prisoners whose sentence had expired?”

Evans. “Yes, sir! They were kept in their cells all the morning; then at eleven their own clothes were brought in clean and dry, and they had half an hour given them to take off the prison dress and put on their own. Then a little before twelve they were taken into the governor’s own room for a word of friendly advice on leaving, or a good book, or a tract, or what not. Then at sharp twelve the gate was opened for them, and–“

Prisoner. “Good-by!–till we see you again.”

Evans (sternly). “Come, my man, it is not for you to speak till you are spoken to.”

Mr. Eden. “You must not take that tone with the gentleman, Evans–this is not a queen’s prisoner, it is a private guest of Mr. Hawes. But time flies. If after what we have heard and seen, you still doubt whether this jailer has broken the law by punishing the same prisoner more than once and in more ways than one, fresh evidence will meet you at every step; but I would now direct your principal attention to other points. Look at Rule 37. By this rule each prisoner must be visited and conversed with by four officers every day, and they are to stay with him upon the aggregate half an hour in the day. Now the object of this rule is to save the prisoners from dying under the natural and inevitable operation of solitude and enforced silence, two things that are fatal to life and reason.”

“But solitary confinement is legal.”

Mr. Eden sighed heavily. “No it is not. Separate confinement, i.e., separation of prisoner from prisoner, is legal, but separation of a prisoner from the human race is as illegal as any other mode of homicide. It never was legal in England; it was legal for a short time in the United States, and do you know why it has been made illegal there?”

“No, I do not.”

“Because they found that life and reason went out under it like the snuff of a candle. Men went mad and died, as men have gone mad and died here through the habitual breach of Rule 37, a rule the aim of which is to guard separate confinement from being shuffled into solitary confinement or homicide. Take twenty cells at random, and ask the prisoners how many officers come and say good words to them as bound by law; ask them whether they get their half hour per diem of improving conversation. There is a row of shambles, go into them by yourself, take neither the head butcher nor me.”

Mr. Lacy bit his lip, bowed stiffly, and beckoned Evans to accompany him into the cells. Mr. Hawes went in search of Fry, to concert what was best to be done. Mr. Eden paced the corridor. As for Mr. Lacy, he took the cells at random, skipping here and there. At last he returned and sent for Mr. Hawes.

“I am sorry to say that the 37th Rule has been habitually violated; the prisoners are unanimous; they tell me that so far from half an hour’s conversation, they never have three minutes, except with the chaplain. And during his late illness they were often in perfect solitude. They tell me, too, that when you do look in it is only to terrify them with angry words and threats. Solitude broken only by harsh language is a very sad condition for a human creature to lie in–the law, it seems, does not sanction it–and our own imperfections should plead against such terrible severity applied indiscriminately to great and small offenders.”

“Oh, that is well said, that is nobly said,” cried Mr. Eden with enthusiasm.

“Sir! I was put in here to carry out the discipline which had been relaxed by the late governor, and I have but obeyed orders as it was my duty.”

“Nonsense,” retorted Mr. Eden. “The discipline of this jail is comprised in these rules, of which eight out of ten are habitually broken by you.”

“He is right there so far, Mr. Hawes. You are here to maintain, not an imaginary discipline, but an existing discipline strictly defined by printed rules, and it seems clear you have committed (through ignorance) serious breaches of these rules. But let us hope, Mr. Eden, that no irreparable consequences have followed this unlucky breach of Rule 37.”

“Irreparable? No!” replied Mr. Eden bitterly. “The Home Office can call men back from the grave, can’t it? Here is a list of five men all extinguished in this prison by breach of Rule 37. You start. Understand me, this is but a small portion of those who have been done to death here in various ways; but these five dropped silently like autumn leaves by breach of Rule 37. Rule 37 is one of the safety valves which the law, more humane than the blockheads who execute it, has attached to that terrible engine separate confinement.”

“I cannot accept this without evidence.”

“I have a book here that contains ample evidence; you shall see it. Meantime I will just ask that turnkey about Hatchett, the first name on your list of victims. Evans, what did you find in Hatchett’s cell when he was first discovered to be dying?”

“Eighteen loaves of bread, sir, on the floor in one corner.”

“Eighteen loaves; I really don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?–how could eighteen loaves have accumulated but by the man rejecting his food for several days? How could they have accumulated unobserved if Rule 37 had not been habitually broken? Alas! sir, Hatchett’s story, which I see is still dark to you, is as plain as my hand to all of us who know the fatal effects of solitary or homicidal confinement. Thus, sir, it was: Unsustained by rational employment, uncheered by the sound of a human voice, torn out by the roots from all healthy contact with the human race, the prisoner Hatchett’s heart and brain gave way together; being now melancholy mad he shunned the food that was jerked blindly into his cell, like a bone to a wolf, by this scientific contrivance to make brute fling food to brute, instead of man handing it with a smile to grateful man; and so his body sunk (his spirits and reason had succumbed before) and he died. His offense was refusing to share his wages with a woman from whom he would have been divorced, but that he was too poor to buy justice at so dear a shop as the House of Lords. The law condemned him to a short imprisonment. The jailer, on his own authority, substituted capital punishment.”

“Is it your pleasure, sir, that I should be vilified and insulted thus to my very face, and by my inferior officer?” asked Hawes, changing color.

“You have nothing to apprehend except from facts,” was the somewhat cold reply. “You are aware I do not share this gentleman’s prejudices.”

“Would you like to see a man in the act of perishing through the habitual breach of Rule 37 in —- Jail?”

“Can you show me such a case?”

“Come with me.”

They entered Strutt’s cell. They found the old man in a state bordering on stupor. When the door was opened he gave a start, but speedily relapsed into stupor.

“Now, Mr. Lacy, here is a lesson for you. Would to God I could show this sight to all the pedants of science who spend their useless lives in studying the limbs of the crustaceonidunculae, and are content to know so little about man’s glorious body; and to all the State dunces who give sordid blockheads the power to wreck the brains and bodies of wicked men in these the clandestine shambles of the nation. Would I could show these and all other numskulls in the land this dying man, that they might write this one great truth in blood on their cold hearts and muddy understandings. Alas! all great truths have to be written in blood ere man will receive them.”

“But what is your great truth?” asked Mr. Lacy impatiently.

“This, sir,” replied Mr. Eden, putting his finger on the stupefied prisoner’s shoulder and keeping it there; “that the human body, besides its grosser wants of food and covering, has its more delicate needs, robbed of which it perishes more slowly and subtly but as surely as when frozen or starved. One of these subtle but absolute conditions of health is light. Without light the body of a blind man pines as pines a tree without light. Tell that to the impostor physical science deep in the crustaceonidunculae and ignorant of the A B C of man. Without light man’s body perishes, with insufficient light it droops; and here in all these separate shambles is insufficient light, a defect in our system which co-operates with this individual jailer’s abuse of it. Another of the body’s absolute needs is work. Another is conversation with human beings. If by isolating a vulgar mind that has collected no healthy food to feed on in time of dearth you starve it to a stand-still, the body runs down like a watch that has not been wound up. Against this law of Nature it is not only impious but idiotic to struggle. Almighty God has made man so, and so he will remain while the world lasts. A little destructive blockhead like this can knock God’s work to pieces–ecce signum–but he can no more alter it while it stands than he can mend it when he has let it down and smashed it. Feel this man’s pulse and look at his eye. Life is ebbing from him by a law of Nature as uniform as that which governs the tides.”

“His pulse is certainly very low, and when I first felt it he was trembling all over.”

“Oh, that was the agitation of his nerves–we opened the door suddenly.”

“And did that make a man tremble?”

“Certainly; that is a well-known symptom of solitary confinement; it is by shattering a man’s nerves all to pieces that it prepares the way for his death, which death comes sometimes in raging lunacy, of which eight men have died under Mr. Hawes’s reign. Here is the list of deaths by lunacy from breach of Rule 37, eight. You will have the particulars by and by.”

“I really don’t see my way through this,” said Mr. Lacy. “Let us come to something tangible. What is this punishment jacket that leaves marks of personal violence on so many prisoners?”

Now Hawes had been looking for this machine to hide it, but to his surprise neither he nor Fry could find it.

“Evans, fetch the infernal machine.”

“Yes, your reverence.” Evans brought the jacket, straps and collar from a cell where he had hidden them by Mr. Eden’s orders. “You play the game pretty close, parson,” said Mr. Hawes, with an attempt at a sneer.

“I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather. However, it works thus: The man being in the jacket its back straps are drawn so tight that the sufferer’s breath is impeded, and his heart, lungs and liver are forced into unnatural contact. You stare. I must inform you that Nature is a wonderfully close packer. Did you ever unpack a human trunk of its stomach, liver, lungs and heart, and then try to replace them? I have; and, believe me, as no gentleman can pack like a shopman, so no shopman can pack like Nature. The victim’s body and organs being crushed these two long straps fasten him so tight to the wall that he cannot move to ease the frightful cramps that soon attack him. Then steps in by way of climax this collar, three inches and a half high. See, it is as stiff as iron, and the miscreants have left the edges unbound that it may do the work of a man-saw as well as a garotte. In this iron three-handed gripe the victim writhes and sobs and moans with anguish, and, worse than all, loses his belief in God.”

“This is a stern picture,” said Mr. Lacy, hanging his head.

“Until what with the freezing of the blood in a body jammed together and flattened against a wall–what with the crushed respiration and the cowed heart a deadly faintness creeps over the victim and he swoons away!”

“Oh!”

“It is a lie–a base, malignant lie!” shouted Hawes.

“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hawes.”

Here the justices with great beat joined in and told Mr. Lacy he would be much to blame if he accepted any statement made against so respectable a man as Mr. Hawes. Then they all turned indignantly on Mr. Eden. That gentleman’s eyes sparkled with triumph.

“I have been trying a long time to make him speak, but he was too cunning. It is a lie, is it?”

“Yes, it is a lie.”

“What is a lie?”

“The whole thing.”

“Give me your book, Mr. Hawes. What do you mean by ‘the punishment-jacket,’ an entry that appears so constantly here in your handwriting?”

“I never denied the jacket.”

“Then what is the lie of which you have accused me? Show me–that I may ask your pardon and His I serve for so great a sin as a lie.”

“It is a lie to say that the jacket tortures the prisoners and makes them faint away; it only confines them. You want to make me out a villain, but it is your own bad heart that makes you think so or say so without thinking it.”

“Now, Mr. Lacy, I think we have caught our eel. This, then, is the ground you take; if it were true that this engine, instead of merely confining men, tortured them to fainting, then you say you would be a villain. You hesitate, sir; can’t you afford to admit that, after all?”

“Yes, I can.”

“But on the other hand you say it is untrue that this engine tortures?”

“I do.”

“Prove that by going into it for one hour. I have seen you put a man in it for six.”

“Now, do you really think I am going to make myself a laughing-stock to the whole prison?”

“Well, but consider what a triumph you are denying yourself to prove me a liar and yourself a true man. It would be the greatest feat of dialects the world ever saw; and you need not stand on your dignity–better men than you have been in it, and there goes one of them. Here, Evans, come this way. We want you to go into the punishment-jacket.” The man recoiled with a ludicrous face of disgust and dismay. Mr. Lacy smiled.

“Now, your reverence, don’t think of it. I don’t want to earn no more guineas that way.”

“What does he mean?” asked Mr. Lacy.

“I gave him a guinea to go into it for half an hour, and he calls it a hard bargain.”

“Oh, you have been in it, then? Tell me, is it torture or is it only confinement?”

“Con-finement! con-found such confinement, I say. Yes, it is torture and the worst of torture. Ask his reverence, he has been in the oven as well as me.”

Mr. Lacy opened his eyes wide.

“What!” said he, with a half grin, “have you been in it?”

“That he has, sir,” said Evans, grinning out in return. “Bless you, his reverence is not the one to ask a poor man to stand any pain he daren’t face himself.”

“There, there, we don’t want to hear about his reverence,” said his reverence very sharply. “Mr. Hawes says it is not torture, and therefore he won’t face it. ‘It is too laughable and painless for me,’ says slippery Mr. Hawes. ‘It _is_ torture, and therefore I won’t face it,’ says the more logical Mr. Evans. But we can cut this knot for you, Mr. Lacy. There are in this dungeon a large body of men so steeped in misery, so used to torture for their daily food, that they will not be so nice as Messrs. Hawes and Evans. ‘Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.’ Follow me, sir; and as we go pray cast your eyes over the prison rules, and see whether you can find ‘a punishment-jacket.’ No, sir, you will not find even a Spanish collar, or a pillory, or a cross, far less a punishment-jacket which combines those several horrors.”

Mr. Hawes hung back and begged a word with the justices. “Gentlemen, you have always been good friends to me–give me a word of advice, or at least let me know your pleasure. Shall I resign–shall I fling my commission in this man’s face who comes here to usurp your office and authority?”

“Resign! Nonsense! “said Mr. Williams. “Stand firm. We will stand by you, and who can hurt you then?”

“You are very good, sirs. Without you I couldn’t put up with any more of this–to be baited and badgered in my own prison, after serving my queen so many years by sea and land.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Woodcock.

“And how can I make head against such a man as Eden–a lawyer in a parson’s skin, an orator too that has a hundred words to say to my one?”

“Let him talk till he is hoarse, we will not let him hurt you.”

“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Your wishes have always been my law. You bid me endure all this insolence; honored by your good opinion, and supported by your promise to stand by me, I will endure it.” And Mr. Hawes was seen to throw off the uneasiness he had put on to bind the magistrates to his defense.

“They are coming back again.”

“Who is this with them?”

Mr. Hawes muttered an oath. “It is a refractory prisoner I had sent to the dark cell. I suppose they will examine him next, and take his word against mine.”

(Chorus of Visiting Justices.) “Shame!”

CHAPTER XXV.

MR. EDEN had taken Mr. Lacy to the dark cells. Evans, who had no key of them, was sent to fetch Fry to open them. “We will kill two birds with one stone–disinter a patient for our leathern gallows, and a fresh incident of the —- Inquisition. Open this door, Mr. Fry.”

The door was opened. A feeble voice uttered a quavering cry of joy that sounded like wailing, and a figure emerged so suddenly and distinctly from the blackness that Mr. Lacy started. It was Thomas Robinson, who crept out white and shaking, with a wild, haggard look. He ran to Mr. Eden like a great girl. “Don’t let me go back–don’t let me go back, sir!” And the cowed one could hardly help whimpering.

“Come, courage, my lad,” rang out Mr. Eden, “your troubles are nearly over. Feel this man’s hand, sir.”

“How he trembles! Why, he must be chicken-hearted.”

“No! only he is one of your men of action, not of passive fortitude. He is imaginative, too, and suffers remorse for his crimes without the soothing comfort of penitence. Twenty-four hours of that black hole would deprive him or any such nature of the light of reason.”

“Is this a mere opinion or do you propose to offer me proof?”

“Six men driven by this means alone to the lunatic asylum, of whom two died there soon after.”

“Hum! of what nature is your proof? I cannot receive assertion.”

“Entries made at the time by a man of unimpeachable honesty.”

“Indeed!”

“Who hates me and adores Mr. Hawes.”

“Very well, Mr. Eden,” replied the other keenly, “whatever you support by such evidence as that I will accept as fact and act upon it.”

“Done!”

“Done!” and Mr. Lacy smiled good-humoredly, but, it must be owned, incredulously. “Is that proof at hand?” he added.

“It is. But one thing at a time–the leathern gallows is the iniquity we are unearthing at present. Ah! here are Mr. Hawes and his subordinates.”

“Subordinates?”

“You will see why I call them so.”

Mr. Williams. “I trust you will not accept the evidence of a refractory prisoner against an honest, well-tried officer, whose conduct for two years past we have watched and approved.”

Mr. Lacy replied with dignity: “Your good opinion of Mr. Hawes shall weigh in his favor at every part of the evidence, but you must not dictate to me the means by which I am to arrive at the truth.”

Mr. Williams bit his lip and was red and silent.

“But, your reverence,” cried Robinson, “don’t let me be called a refractory prisoner when you know I am not.”

“Then what were you in the black-hole for?”

“For obeying orders.”

“Nonsense! hum! Explain.”

“His reverence said to me, ‘You are a good writer; write your own life down. See how you like it when you look at it with reason’s eye instead of passion’s, all spread out before you in its true colors. Tell the real facts–no false coin, nor don’t put any sentiments down you don’t feel to please me–I shall only despise you,’ said his reverence. Well, sir, I am not a fool, and so of course I could see how wise his reverence was, and how much good might come to my poor sinful soul by doing his bidding; and I said a little prayer he had taught me against a self-deceiving heart–his reverence is always letting fly at self-deception–and then I sat down and I said, ‘Now I won’t tell a single lie or make myself a pin better or worse than I really am. Well, gentlemen, I hadn’t written two pages when Mr. Fry found me out and told the governor, and the governor had me shoved into the black-hole where you found me.”

“This is Mr. Fry, I think?”

“My name is Fry”

“Was this prisoner sent to the black-hole merely for writing his life by the chaplain’s orders?”

“You must ask the governor, sir. My business is to report offenses and to execute orders; I don’t give ’em.”

“Mr. Hawes, was he sent to the black-hole for doing what the chaplain had set him to do by way of a moral lesson?”

“He was sent for scribbling a pack of lies without my leave.”

“What! when he had the permission of your superior officer.”

“Of my superior officer?”

“Your superior in the department of instruction, I mean. Can you doubt that he is so with these rules before you? Let me read you one of them: ‘Rule 18. All prisoners, including those sentenced to hard labor, are to have such time allowed them for instruction as the chaplain may think proper, whether such instruction withdraw them from their labor for a time or not.’ And again, by ‘Rule 80. Each prisoner is to have every means of moral and religious instruction the chaplain shall select for each as suitable.’ So that you have passed out of your own department into a higher department, which was a breach of discipline, and you have affronted the head of that department and strained your authority to undermine his, and this in the face of Rule 18, which establishes this principle: that should the severities of the prison claim a prisoner by your mouth, and religious or moral instruction claim him by the chaplain’s, your department must give way to the higher department.”

“This is very new to me, sir; but if it is the law–“

“Why, you see it is the law, printed for your guidance. I undo your act, Mr. Hawes; the prisoner Robinson will obey the chaplain in all things that relate to religious or moral instruction, and he will write his life as ordered, and he is not to be put to hard labor for twenty-four hours. By this means he will recover his spirits and the time and moral improvement you have made him lose. You hear, sir?” added he very sharply.

“I hear,” said Hawes sulkily.

“Go on with your evidence, Mr. Eden.”

“Robinson, my man, you see that machine?”

“Ugh! yes, I see it.”

“For two months I have been trying to convince Mr. Hawes that engine is illegal. I failed; but I have been more fortunate with this gentleman who comes from the Home Office. He has not taken as many minutes to see it is unlawful.”

“Stop a bit, Mr. Eden. It is clearly illegal, but the torture is not proved.”

“Nor ever will be,” put in Mr. Hawes.

“So then, Robinson, no man on earth has the right to put you into that machine.”

“Hurrah!”

“It is therefore as a favor that I ask you to go into it to show its operation.”

“A favor, your reverence, to you? I am ready in a minute.” Robinson was jammed, throttled, and nailed in the man-press. Mr. Lacy stood in front of him and eyed him keenly and gravely. “They seem very fond of you, these fellows.”

“Can you give your eyes to that sight and your ears to me?” asked Mr. Eden.

“I can.”

“Then I introduce to you a new character–Mr. Fry. Mr. Fry is a real character, unlike those of romance and melodrama, which are apt to be either a streak of black paint or else a streak of white paint. Mr. Fry is variegated. He is a moral magpie; he is, if possible, as devoid of humanity as his chief; but to balance this defect, he possesses, all to himself, a quality, a very high quality, called Honesty.”

“Well, that is a high quality and none too common.”

“He is one of those men to whom veracity is natural. He would hardly know how to tell a falsehood. They fly about him in this place like hailstones, but I never saw one come from him.”

“Stay! does he side with you or with Mr. Hawes in this unfortunate difference?”

“With me!” cried Mr. Hawes eagerly. Mr. Eden bowed assent. “Hum!”

“This honest Nero is zealous according to his light; he has kept a strict record of the acts and events of the jail for four years past; i.e., rather more than two years of Captain O’Connor’s jailership, and somewhat less than two years of the present jailer. Such a journal, rigorously kept out of pure love of truth by such a man is invaluable. There no facts are likely to be suppressed or colored, since the record was never intended for any eye but his own. I am sure Mr. Fry will gratify you with a sight of this journal. Oblige me, Mr. Fry!”

“Certainly, sir! certainly!” replied Fry, swelling with importance and gratified surprise.

“Bring it me at once, if you please.” Fry went with alacrity for his journal.

“Mr. Lacy,” said Mr. Eden, with a slight touch of reproach, “you can read not faces only but complexions. You read in my yellow face and sunken eye–prejudice; what do you read here?” and he wheeled like lightning and pointed to Mr. Hawes, whose face and very lips were then seen to be the color of ashes. The poor wretch tried to recover composure, and retort defiance; but the effort came too late. His face had been seen, and once seen that look of terror, anguish and hatred was never to be forgotten.

“What is the matter, Mr. Hawes?”

“W–W–When I think of my long services, and the satisfaction I have given to my superiors–and now my turnkey’s journal to be taken and believed against mine.”

(Chorus of Justices.) “It is a shame!”

Mr. Eden (very sharply). “Against yours? what makes him think it will be against his? The man is his admirer, and an honest man. What injustice has he to dread from such a source?”

Mr. Lacy. “I really cannot understand your objection to a man’s evidence whose bias lies your way; and I must say, it speaks well for Mr. Eden that he has proposed this man in evidence.”

At this juncture the magistrates, after a short consultation, informed Mr. Lacy that they had business of more importance to transact, and could give no more time to what appeared to them an idle and useless inquiry.

“At all events, gentlemen,” replied Mr. Lacy, “I trust you will not leave the jail. I am not here to judge Mr. Hawes, but to see whether Mr. Eden’s demand for a formal inquiry into his acts ought to be granted or refused. Now unless the evidence takes some new turn I incline to think I must favor the inquiry; that is to say, should the chaplain persist in demanding it.”

“Which I shall.”

“Should a royal commission be appointed to sit here, I should naturally wish to consult you as to the component members of the commission; and it is my wish to pay you the compliment usual in such cases of selecting one of the three commissioners from your body. But one question, gentlemen, before you go. Have you complied with No. 1 of these your rules? Have you visited every prisoner in his or her cell once a month?”

“Certainly not!”

“I am sorry to hear it. Of course, at each visit, you have closely examined this the jailer’s book, a record of his acts and the events of the jail?”

“Portions of it are read to us; this is a form which I believe is never omitted–is it, Mr. Hawes?”

“Never, gentlemen!”

“‘Portions!’ and ‘a form!’ what, then, are your acts of supervision? Do you examine the turnkeys, and compare their opinions with the jailer’s?”

“We would not be guilty of such ungentlemanly behavior!” replied Mr. Williams, who had been longing for some time to give Mr. Lacy a slap.

“Do you examine the prisoners apart, so that there can be no intimidation of them?”

“We always take Mr. Hawes into the cells with us.”

“Why do you do that, pray?”

“We conceive that nothing would be gained by encouraging the refuse of mankind to make frivolous complaints against their best friend.” Here the speaker and his mates wore a marked air of self-satisfaction.

“Well, sir! has the present examination in no degree shaken your confidence in Mr. Hawes’s discretion?”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor in your own mode of scrutinizing his acts?”

“Not in the least.”

“That is enough! Gentlemen, I need detain you no longer from the business you have described as more important than this!”

Mr. Lacy shrugged his shoulders. Mr. Eden smiled to him, and said quietly:

“As they were in the days of Shakespeare so they were in the days of Fielding; as they were in the days of Fielding so they are in the days of light; and as they are now so will they remain until they are swept away from the face of the soil. (Keep your eye on Mr. Hawes, edging away there so adroitly.) It is not their fault, it is their nature; their constitution is rotten; in building them the State ignored Nature, as Hawes ignores her in his self-invented discipline.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“That no _body_ of men ever gave for nothing anything worth anything, nor ever will. Now knowledge of law is worth something; zeal, independent judgment, honesty, humanity, diligence are worth something (are you watching Mr. Hawes, sir?); yet the State, greedy goose, hopes to get them out of a body of men for nothing!”

“Hum! Why has Mr. Hawes retired?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“Oh! do I?”

“Yes, sir! the man’s terror when Fry’s journal was proposed in evidence, and his manner of edging away obliquely to the direction Fry took, were not lost on a man of your intelligence.”

“If you think that, why did you not stop him till Fry came back with the book?”

“I had my reasons; meantime we are not at a stand-still. Here is an attested copy of the journal in question; and here is Mr. Hawes’s log-book. Fry’s book intended for no mortal eye but his own; Hawes’s concocted for inspection.”

“I see a number of projecting marks pasted into Fry’s journal!”

“Yes, sir; on some of these marks are written the names of remarkable victims, recurring at intervals; on others are inscribed the heads of villainy–‘the black-hole,’ ‘starvation,’ ‘thirst,’ ‘privation of exercise,’ ‘of bed,’ ‘of gas,’ ‘of chapel,’ ‘of human converse,’ ‘inhuman threats,’ and the infernal torture called the ‘punishment-jacket.’ Somewhat on the plan of ‘Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica.’ So that you can at will trace any one of Mr. Hawes’s illegal punishments, and see it running like a river of blood through many hapless names; or you can, if you like it better, track a fellow-creature dripping blood from punishment to punishment, from one dark page to another, till release, lunacy, or death closes the list of his recorded sufferings.”

Aided by Mr. Eden, who whirled over the leaves of Mr. Hawes’s log-book for him, Mr. Lacy compared several pages of the two books. The following is merely a selected specimen of the entries that met his eye:

MR. FRY. MR. HAWES.

Joram.Writing on his can–bread and Joram.Refractory–bread and water. water.

Joram.Bread and water.

Joram.Bread and water. Joram.Refractory–crank; bread and water.

Joram.Crank not performed–bread
and water.

Joram.Punishment-jacket.

Joram.Refractory–crank–bread and Joram. Refractory–bread and water. water.

Joram.Attempted suicide; Joram. Feigned suicide; cause insensible when found. Had religious despondency–put on cut off pieces of his hair to sick-list. send to his friends–sick-list.

Josephs. Crank not performed; says Josephs. Refractory; said he could not turn the crank No. 9; he would not work on crank 9; punishment-jacket. punishment-jacket.

Tomson. Communicating in chapel– Tomson.Communicating–dark cells. dark cell 12 hours.

Tomson. Bread and water.

Tomson. Crank not performed; Tomson. Refractory–jacket. punishment-jacket.

Tomson. Dark cells.

Tomson. No chapel.

Tomson. Dark cells.

Tomson. Melancholy. Tomson. Afflicted with remorse for past crimes–surgeon.

Tomson. Very strange.

Tomson. Removed to lunatic asylum. Tomson. Removed to asylum.

Tanner (nine years old). Caught Tanner. Caught up at window; up at window; asked what he did answered insolently–jacket. there; said he wanted to feel the
light–jacket, and bread and water
three days.

Tanner. For repining–chapel Tanner. Refractory language– and gas stopped until content. forbidden chapel until reformation.

“Can I see such a thing as a prisoner who has attempted suicide?” inquired he, with lingering incredulity.

“Yes! there are three on this landing. Come first to Joram, of whom Mr. Hawes writes that he made a sham attempt on his life in a fit of religious despondency–Mr. Fry, that having been jacketed and put on bread and water for several days, he became depressed in spirits and made a real attempt on his life. Ah! here is Mr. Fry, he is coming this way to tell you his first falsehood. Hawes has been all this while persuading him to it.”

“Where is your journal, Mr. Fry?”

“Well, sir,” replied Fry, hanging his head, “I can’t show it you. I lent it to a friend, now I remember, and he has taken it out of the jail; but,” added he with a sense of relief, “you can ask me any questions you like and I’ll answer them all one as my book.”

“Well, then, was Joram’s attempt at suicide a real or a feigned one?”

“Well, I should say it was a real one. I found him insensible and he did not come to for best part of a quarter of an hour.”

“Open his cell.”

“Joram, I am here from the Secretary of State to ask you some questions. Answer them truly and without fear. Some months ago you made an attempt on your life.”

The prisoner shuddered and hung his head.

“Don’t be discouraged, Joram,” put in Mr. Eden kindly, “this gentleman is not a harsh judge, he will make allowances.”

“Thank you, gentlemen.”

“What made you attempt your life?” persisted Mr. Lacy. “Was it from religious despondency?”

“That it was not. What did I know about religion before his reverence here came to the jail? No, sir, I was clammed to death.”

“Clammed?”

“Yes, sir, clammed and no mistake.”

“North-country word for starved,” explained Mr. Eden.

“No, sir, I was starved as well. It was very cold weather, and they gave me nothing but a roll of bread no bigger than my fist once a day for the best part of a week. So being starved with cold and clammed with hunger I knew I couldn’t live many hours more, and then the pain in my vitals was so dreadful, sir, I was obliged to cut it short. Ay! ay! your reverence, I know it was very wicked–but what was I to do? If I hadn’t attempted my life I shouldn’t be alive now. A poor fellow doesn’t know what to do in such a place as this.”

“Well,” said Mr. Lacy, “I promise you your food shall never be tampered with again.”

“Thank you, sir. Oh! I have nothing to complain of now, sir; they have never clammed me since I attempted my life.”

Mr. Eden. “Suicide is at a premium here.”

“What was your first offense?” asked Mr. Lacy.

“Writing on my can.”

“What did you write on the can?”

“I wrote, ‘I want to speak to the governor.'”

“Couldn’t you ring and ask to see him?”

“Ring and ask? I had rung half a dozen times and asked to see him and could not get to see him. My hand was blistered, and I wanted to ask him to put me on a different sort of work till such time as it could get leave to heal.”

“Now, sir,” said Mr. Eden, “observe the sequence of iniquity. A refractory jailer defies the discipline of the prison. He breaks Rule 37 and other rules by which he is ordered to be always accessible to a prisoner. The prisoner being in a strait, through which the jailer alone can guide him, begs for an interview; unable to obtain this in his despair he writes one innocent line on his can imploring the jailer to see him. None of the beasts say, ‘What has he written?’ they say only, ‘Here be scratches,’ and they put him on bread and water for an illegal period; and Mr. Hawes’s new and illegal interpretation of ‘bread and water’ is aimed at his life. I mean that instead of receiving three times per diem a weight of bread equal to the weight of his ordinary diets (which is clearly the intention of the bread and water statute), he has once a day four ounces of bread. So because a refractory jailer breaks the discipline, a prisoner with whom no breach of the discipline _originated_ is feloniously put to death unless he cuts it short by that which in every spot of the earth but —- Jail is a deadly crime in Heaven’s eyes–self-murder.”

“What an eye your reverence ha’ got for things! Well now it doesn’t sound quite fair, does it? but stealing is a dog’s trick, and if a man behaves like a dog he must look to be treated like one; and he will be, too.”

“That is right, Joram; you look at it from that point of view, and we will look at it from another.”

“Open Naylor’s cell. Naylor, what drove you to attempt suicide?”

“Oh! you know, sir.”

“But this gentleman does not.”

“Well, gents, they had been at me a pretty while one way and another; they put me in the jacket till I fainted away.”

“Stop a minute; is the jacket very painful?”

“There is nothing in the world like it, sir.”

“What is its effect? What sort of pain?”

“Why, all sorts! it crushes your very heart. Then it makes you ache from your hair to your heel, till you would thank and bless any man to knock you on the head. Then it takes you by the throat and pinches you and rasps you all at one time. However, I don’t think but what I could have stood up against that, if I had had food enough; but how can a chap face trouble and pain and hard labor on a crumb a day? However, what finally screwed up my stocking altogether, gents, was their taking away my gas. It was the dark winter nights, and there was me set with an empty belly and the cell like a grave. So then I turned a little queer in the head by all accounts, and I saw things that–hem!–didn’t suit my complaint at all, you know.”

“What things?”

“Well, gents, it is all over now, but it makes me shiver still, so I don’t care to be reminded; let us drop it if it is all the same to you.”

“But, Naylor, for the sake of other poor fellows and to oblige me.”

“Oh! your reverence, if I can oblige you that alters the case entirely. Well, then, sir, if you must know, I saw ‘Child of Hell’ wrote in great letters of fire all over that side of the cell. Always every evening this was all my society, as the saying is; ‘Child of Hell’ wrote ten times brighter than gas.

“Couldn’t you shut your eyes and go to sleep?” said Mr. Lacy.

“How could I sleep? and I did shut my eyes, and then the letters they came through my eyelids. So when this fell on the head of all my troubles I turned wild, and I said to myself one afternoon, ‘Now here is my belly empty and nothing coming to it, and there is the sun a-setting, and by-and-by my cell will be brimful of hell-fire–let me end my troubles and get one night’s rest if I never see another.’ So I hung myself up to the bar by my hammock-strap, and that is all I remember except finding myself on my back, with Mr. Fry and a lot round me, some coaxing and some cursing; and when I saw where I was I fell a-crying and blubbering, to think that I had so nearly broke prison and there they had got me still. I dare say Mr. Fry remembers how I took on.”

“Ay, my man, I remember we got no thanks for bringing you to.”

“I was a poor unconverted sinner then,” replied Mr. Naylor demurely, “and didn’t know my fault and the consequences; but I thank you now with all my heart, Mr. Fry, sir.”

“I am to understand then that you accuse the jailer of driving you to suicide by unlawful severities?”

“No, sir, I don’t. I only tell you how it happened, and you should not have asked me if you didn’t care to know; and as for blaming folk, the man I blame the most is John Naylor. His reverence there has taught me to look at home. If I hadn’t robbed honest folk I shouldn’t have robbed myself of character and liberty and health, and Mr. Hawes wouldn’t have robbed me of food and light and life wellnigh. Certainly there _is_ a deal of ignorance and stupidity in this here jail. The governor has no head-piece; can’t understand that a prisoner is made out of the same stuff as he is–skin and belly, heart, soul, bones an’ all. I should say he wasn’t fit to be trusted with the lives of a litter of pigs, let alone a couple of hundred men and women. But all is one for that; if he was born without any gumption, as the saying is, I wasn’t, and I didn’t ought to be in a fool’s power; that is my fault entirely, not the fool’s; ain’t it now? If I hadn’t come to the mill the miller would never have grinded me! I sticks to that!”

“Well said, Naylor. Come, sir, One higher than the State takes precedence here. We must on no account shake a Christian frame of mind or rekindle a sufferer’s wrongs. Yes, Naylor, forgive and you shall be forgiven. I am pleased with you, greatly pleased with you, my poor fellow. There is my hand!” Naylor took his reverence’s hand and his very forehead reddened with pride and pleasure at so warm a word of praise from the revered mouth. They went out of the cell. Being now in the corridor, Mr. Eden addressed the Government official thus:

“My proofs draw to a close. I could multiply instances ad infinitum–but what is the use? If these do not convince you you would not believe though one rose from the dead. What do I say? Have not Naylor and Joram and many others come back from the dead to tell you by what roads they were driven there? One example remains to be shown. To a philosophical mind it is no stronger than the rest; but there are many men who can receive no very strong impression except through their senses. You may be one of these; and it is my duty to give your judgment every aid. Where is Mr. Fry? He has left us.”

“I am coming to attend you, sir,” cried Evans from above. “Mr. Fry is gone to the governor.”

“Where are we going?” asked Mr. Lacy.

“To examine a prisoner whom the jailer tortured with the jacket, and starved, and ended by robbing him of his gas and his bed contrary to law. Evans, since you are here, relate all that happened to Edward Josephs on the fourth of this month–and mind you don’t exaggerate.”

“Well, sir, they had been at him for near a month, overtasking him and then giving him the jacket, and starving him and overtasking him again on his empty stomach till the poor lad was a living skeleton. On the fourth the governor put him in the jacket, and there he was kept till he swooned.”

“Ah!”

“Then they flung two buckets of water over him and that brought him to. Then they sent him to his cell and there he was in his wet clothes. Then him being there shaking with cold, the governor ordered his gas to be taken away–his hands were shaking over it for a little warmth when they robbed him of that bit o’ comfort.”

“Hum!”

“Contrary to law!” put in Mr. Eden.

“Well, sir, he was a quiet lad not given to murmur, but at losing his gas he began to cry out so loud you might hear him all over the prison.”

“What did he cry?”

“Sir, he cried MURDER!”

“Go on.”

“Then I came to him and found him shivering and dripping, and crying fit to break his poor heart.”

“And did you do nothing for him?”

“I did what I could, sir. I took him and twisted his bedclothes so tight round him the air could not get in, and before I left him his sobs went down and he looked like warm and sleeping after all his troubles. Well, sir, they can tell you better that did the job, but it seems the governor sent another turnkey called Hodges to take away his bed from under him.”

“Oh!”

“Well, sir! oh dear me! I hope, your reverence, I shall never have to tell this story again, for it chokes me every time.” And the man was unable to go on for a while. “Well, sir, the poor thing it seems didn’t cry out as he had about the gas, he took it quite quiet–that might have let them know, but some folk can see nothing till it is too late–and he gave Hodges his hand to show he bore him no malice. Eh dear! eh dear! Would to Heaven I had never seen this wicked place!”

“Wicked place, indeed!” said Mr. Lacy solemnly. “You make me almost dread to ask the result.”

“You shall see the result. Evans!”

Evans opened cell 15, and he and Mr. Eden stood sorrowful aside while Mr. Lacy entered the cell. The first thing he saw was a rude coffin standing upright by the window, the next a dead body lying stark upon a mattress on the floor. The official uttered a cry like the scream of a woman! “What is this? How dare you bring me to such a place as this?”

“This is that Edward Josephs whose sufferings you have heard and pitied.”

“Poor wretch! Heaven forgive us! What, did he–did he–?”

“He took one step to meet inevitable death–he hanged himself that same night by his handkerchief to this bar. Turn his poor body, Evans. See, sir, here is Mr. Hawes’s mark upon his back. These livid stripes are from the infernal jacket and helped to lash him into his grave. You are ill. Here! some wine from my flask! You will faint else!”

“Thank you! Yes, I was rather faint. It is passed. Mr. Eden, I find my life has been spent among words–things of such terrible significance are new to me. God forgive us! how came this to pass in England in the nineteenth century? The —- scoundrel!”

“Kick him out of the jail, but do not swear; it is a sin. By removing him from this his great temptation we may save even his blood-stained soul. But the souls of his victims? Oh, sir, when a good man is hurried to his grave our lamentations are natural but unwise; but think what he commits who hurries thieves and burglars and homicides unprepared before their eternal Judge. In this poor boy lay the materials of a saint–mild, docile, grateful, believing. I was winning him to all that is good when I fell sick. The sufferings I saw and could not stop–they made me sick. You did not know that when you let my discolored cheeks prejudice you against my truth. Oh! I forgive you, dear sir! Yes, Heaven is inscrutable; for had I not fallen ill–yes, I was leading you up to Heaven, was I not? Oh, my lost sheep! my poor lost sheep!” And the faithful shepherd, at the bottom of whose wit and learning lay a heart simpler than beats in any dunce, forgot Hawes and everything else and began to mourn by the dead body of his wandering sheep.

Then in that gloomy abode of blood and tears Heaven wrought a miracle. One who for twenty years past had been an official became a man for full five minutes. Light burst on him–Nature rushed back upon her truant son and seized her long-forgotten empire. The frost and reserve of office melted like snow in summer before the sun of religion and humanity. How unreal and idle appeared now the twenty years gone in tape and circumlocution! Away went his life of shadows–his career of watery polysyllables meandering through the great desert into the Dead Sea. He awoke from his desk and saw the corpse of an Englishman murdered by routine, and the tears of a man of God dripping upon it.

Then his soul burst its desk and his heart broke its polysyllables and its tapen bonds, and the man of office came quickly to the man of God and seized his hand with both his which shook very much, and pressed it again and again, and his eyes glistened and his voice faltered. “This shall never be again. How these tears honor you! but they cut me to the heart. There! there! I believe every word you have told me now. Be comforted! you are not to blame! there were always villains in the world and fools like us that could not understand or believe in an apostle like you. We are all in fault, but not you! Be comforted! Law and order shall be restored this very day and none of these poor creatures shall suffer violence again or wrong of any sort–by God!”

So these two grasped hands and pledged faith and for a while at least joined hearts. Mr. Eden thanked him with a grace and dignity all his own. Then he said with a winning sweetness, “Go now, my dear sir, and do your duty. Act for once upon an impulse. At this moment you see things as you will see them when you come to die. A light from Heaven shines on your path at this moment. Walk by it ere the world dims it. Go and leave me to repent the many unchristian tempers I have shown you in one short hour–my heat and bitterness and arrogance–in this solemn place.”

“His unchristian temper! poor soul! There, take me to the justices, Mr. Evans, and you follow me as soon as you like. Yes, my worthy friend, I will act upon an impulse for once–Ugh!”

Wheeling rapidly out of the cell, as unlike his past self as a pin-wheel in a shop-drawer and ditto ignited, he met at the very door Mr. Hawes!

“You have been witnessing a sad sight, sir, and one that nobody, I assure you, deplores more than I do,” said Mr. Hawes, in a gentle and feeling tone.

Mr. Lacy answered Mr. Hawes by looking him all over from head to foot and back, then looking sternly into his eyes he turned his back on him sharp and left him standing there without a word.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE jailer had been outwitted by the priest. Hawes had sneaked after Fry to beg him for Heaven’s sake–that was the phrase he used–not to produce his journal. Fry thought this very hard, and it took Hawes ten minutes to coax him over. Mr. Eden had calculated on this, and worked with the attested copy, while Hawes was wasting his time suppressing the original. Hawes was too cunning to accompany Fry back to Mr. Lacy. He allowed five minutes more to elapse–all which time his antagonist was pumping truth into the judge a gallon a stroke. At last up came Mr. Hawes to protect himself and baffle the parson. He came, he met Mr. Lacy at the dead prisoner’s door, and read his defeat.

Mr. Lacy joined the justices in their room. “I have one question to ask you, gentlemen, before I go: How many attempts at suicide were made in this jail under Captain O’Connor while sole jailer?”

“I don’t remember,” replied Mr. Williams.

“It would be odd if you did, for no one such attempt took place under him. Are you aware how many attempts at suicide took place during the two years that this Hawes governed a part of the jail, being kept in some little check by O’Connor, but not much, as unfortunately you encouraged the inferior officer to defy his superior? Five attempts at suicide during this period, gentlemen. And now do you know how many such attempts have occurred since Mr. Hawes has been sole jailer?”

“I really don’t know. Prisoners are always shamming,” replied Mr. Woodcock.

“I do not allude to feigned attempts, of which there have been several, but to desperate attempts; some of which have left the prisoner insensible, some have resulted in his death–how many of these?”

“Four or five, I believe.”

“Ah, you have not thought it worth while to inquire!! Hum!–well, fourteen, at least. Come in, Mr. Eden. Gentlemen, you have neglected your duty. Making every allowance for your inexperience, it still is clear that you have undertaken the supervision of a jail and yet have exercised no actual supervision; even now the life or death of the prisoners seems to you a matter of indifference. If you are reckless on such a point as this, what chance have the minor circumstances of their welfare of being watched by you? and frankly I am puzzled to conceive what you proposed to yourselves when you undertook an office so important and requiring so great vigilance. I say this, gentlemen, merely to explain why I cannot have the pleasure I did promise myself of putting one of your names into the royal commission which will sit upon this prison in compliance with the chaplain’s petition.”

Mr. Eden bowed gratefully, and his point being formally gained, he hurried away to make up for lost time and visit his longing prisoners. While he passed like sunshine from cell to cell, Mr. Lacy took a note or two in solemn silence, and the injustices conferred. Mr. Palmer whispered, “We had better have taken Mr. Eden’s advice.” The other two snorted ill-assured defiance. Mr. Lacy looked up. “You will hold yourselves in readiness to be examined before the commission.” At this moment Mr. Hawes walked into the room without his mask, and in his own brutal voice–the voice he spoke to prisoners with–addressed himself, with great insolence of manner, to Mr. Lacy. “Don’t trouble yourself to hold commissions over me. I think myself worth a great deal more to the government than they have ever been to me. What they give me is little enough for what I have given them, and when insults are added to a man of honor and an old servant of the queen, he flings his commission in your face;” and the unveiled ruffian raised his voice, to a roar, and with his hand flung an imaginary commission into Mr. Lacy’s face, who drew back astounded; then resuming his honeyed manner Hawes turned to the justices. “I return into your hands, gentlemen, the office I received from you. I thank you for the support you have afforded me in my endeavors to substitute discipline for the miserable laxity and slovenliness and dirt we found here; and your good opinion will always console me for the insults I have received from a crack-brained parson and his tools in the jail and out of it.”

“Your resignation is accepted,” said Mr. Lacy coldly, “and as your connection with —- Jail is now ended, in virtue of my powers from the Secretary of State, which I here produce, I give you the use of the jailer’s house for a week, that you may have time to move your effects; but for many reasons it is advisable that you should not remain in the _jail_ a single hour. Be so good, therefore, as to quit the jail as soon as you conveniently can. One of the turnkeys shall assist you to convey to your house whatever you have in this building.”

“I have nothing to take out of the jail, man,” replied Hawes rudely, “except”–and here he did a bit of pathos and dignity–“my zeal for her majesty’s service and my integrity.”

“Ah,” replied Mr. Lacy quietly, “you won’t want any help to carry them.”

Mr. Hawes left the room, bowing to the justices and ostentatiously ignoring the government official. Mr. Williams shouted after him. “He carries our respect wherever he goes,” said this magistrate with a fidelity worthy a better cause. The other two hung their heads and did not echo their chief. The tide was turned against Jailer Hawes, and these two were not the articles to swim against a stream even though that stream was truth.

Mr. Hawes took his time. He shook hands with Fry, who bade him farewell with regret. Who is there that somebody does not contrive to like? And rejecting even this mastiff’s company he made a gloomy, solitary progress through the prison for the last time. “How clean and beautiful it all is; it wasn’t like that when I came to it, and it never will again.” Some gleams of remorse began to flit about that thick skull and self-deceiving heart, for punishment suggests remorse to sordid natures. But his strong and abiding feeling was a sincere and profound sense of ill usage–long service–couldn’t overlook a single error–ungrateful government, etc. “Prison go to the devil now–and serve them right.” At last he drew near the outer court, and there he met a sight that raised all the fiend within him. There was Mr. Eden ushering Strutt into the garden, and telling Evans the old man was to pass his whole days there till he was better. “So that is the way you keep the rules now you have undermined me! No cell at all. I thought what you would come to. You haven’t been long getting there.”

“Mr. Hawes,” replied the other with perfect good temper, “Rule 34 of this prison enjoins that every prisoner shall take daily as much exercise in the open air as is necessary for his health. You have violated this rule so long that now Strutt’s health requires him to pass many more hours in the air than he otherwise would; he is dying for air and amusement, and he shall have both sooner than die for the want of them, or of anything I can give him.”

“And what is it to _him?”_ retorted Evans with rude triumph; “he is no longer an officer of this jail; he has got the sack and orders to quit into the bargain.”

Fear is entertained that Mr. Evans had listened more or less at the door of the justices’ room.

“Is this so, sir?” asked Mr. Eden gravely, politely, and without a shadow of visible exultation.

“You know it is, you sneaking, undermining villain; you have weathered on me, you have out-maneuvered me. When was an honest soldier a match for a parson?”

“Ah!” cried Mr. Eden. “Then run to the gate, Evans, and let the men into the jail with the printing-press and the looms. They have been waiting four hours for this.”

Hawes turned black with rage. “Oh, I know you made sure of winning; a blackguard that loads the dice can always do that. Your triumph won’t be long. I was in this jail honored and respected for four years till you came. You won’t be four months before you are kicked out, and no one to say a good word for you. A pretty Christian! to suborn my own servants and rob me of my place and make me a beggar in my old age, a man you are not worthy to serve under, a man that served his country by sea and land before you were whelped, ye black hypocrite. You a Christian! you? If I thought that I’d turn Atheist or anything, you poor, backbiting, tale-telling, sneaking, undermining, false witness bearing–“

“Unhappy man,” cried Mr. Eden; “turn those perverse eyes from the faults of others to your own danger. The temptations under which you fell end here; then let their veil fall from your eyes, and you may yet bless those who came between your soul and its everlasting ruin. Your victims are dead; their eternal fate is fixed by you. Heaven is more merciful–it has not struck you dead by your victim’s side; it gives you, the greatest sinner of all, a chance to escape. Seize that chance. Waste no time in passion and petulance–think only of your forfeited soul. Madman, to your knees! What! dare you die as you have lived these three years past? dare you die abhorred of Heaven? Fool! see yourself as every eye on earth and in heaven sees you. The land contains no criminal so black as you. Other homicides have struck hastily on provocation or stung by injury, or thrust or drawn by some great passion–but you have deliberately gnawed away men’s lives. Others have seen their one victim die, but you have looked on your many victims dying yet not spared them. Other homicides’ hands are stained, but yours are steeped in blood. To your knees, MAN-slayer! I dare not promise you that a life given to penitence and charity will save so foul a soul, but it may, for Heaven’s mercy is infinite. Seize on that small chance. Seize it like one who feels Satan clutching him and dragging him down to eternal flames. Life is short, eternity is close, judgment is sure. A few short years and you must meet Edward Josephs again before the eternal Judge. What a tribunal to face, your victims opposite you! There the long-standing prejudices that save you from a felon’s death here will avail you nothing. There the quibbles that pass current on earth will be blasted with the lips that dare to utter and the hearts that coin them. Before Him, who has neither body nor parts, yet created all the forms of matter, vainly will you pretend that you did not slay, because forsooth the weapons with which you struck at life were invisible and not to be comprehended by a vulgar, shallow, sensual, earthly judge. There, too, the imperfection of human language will yield no leaf of shelter.

“Hope not to shift the weight of guilt upon poor Josephs there. On earth muddle-heads will call his death and the self-murderer’s by one name of ‘suicide,’ and so dream the two acts were one; but you cannot gull Omniscience with a word–the wise man’s counter and the money of a fool. Be not deceived! As Rosamond took poison in her hand, and drank it with her own lips, and died by her own act, yet died assassinated by her rival–so died Josephs. As men taken by pirates at sea, and pricked with cold steel till in despair and pain they fling themselves into the sea–so died Josephs and his fellows murdered by you. Be not deceived! I, a minister of the gospel of mercy–I, whose character leans toward charity, tell you that if you die impenitent, so surely as the sun shines and the Bible is true, the murder of Edward Josephs and his brothers will damn your soul to the flames of hell forever–and forever–and forever!

“Begone, then, poor miserable creature! Do not look behind you. Fly from this scene where crime and its delusions still cling round your brain and your self-deceiving heart. Waste no more time with me. A minute lost may be a soul lost. The avenger of blood is behind you. Run quickly to your own home–go up to your secret chamber–and there fall down upon your knees before your God and cry loud and long to him for pardon. Cry mightily for help–cry humbly and groaning for the power to repent. Away! away! Wash those red hands and that black soul in years and years of charity, in tears and tears of penitence, and in our Redeemer’s blood. Begone, and darken and trouble us here no more.”

The cowed jailer shrank and cowered before the thunder and lightning of the priest, who, mild by nature, was awful when he rebuked an impenitent sinner out of holy writ. He slunk away, his knees trembling under him, and the first fiery seeds of remorse sown in his dry heart. He met the printing-press coming in, and the loom following it (naturally); he scowled at them and groaned. Evans held the door open for him with a look of joy that stirred all his bile again. He turned on the very threshold and spat a volley of oaths upon Evans. Evans at this put down his head like a bull, and running fiercely with the huge door, slammed it close on his heel with such ferocity that the report rang like a thunder-clap through the entire building, and the ex-jailer was in the street.

Five minutes more, the printing-press and loom were reinstalled, and the punishment-jacket packed up and sent to London to the Home Office. Ten minutes more, the cranks were examined by the artists in iron Mr. Eden had sent for, and all condemned, it being proved that the value of their resistance stated on their lying faces was scarce one-third of their actual resistance. So much for unerring* science!

*The effect of this little bit of science may be thus stated –Men for two years had been punished as refractory for not making all day two thousand revolutions per hour of a 15 lb. crank, when all the while it was a _45 lb. crank_ they had been vainly struggling against all day. The proportions of this gory lie never varied. Each crank tasked the Sisyphus three times what it professed to do. It was calculated that four prisoners, on an average crank marked 10 lb., had to exert an aggregate of force equal to one horse; and this exertion was prolonged, day after day, far beyond a horse’s power of endurance, and in many cases on a modicum of food so scanty that no horse ever foaled, so fed, could have drawn an armchair a mile.

Five minutes more Mr. Eden had placed in Mr. Lacy’s hands a list of prisoners to whom a free pardon ought now to be extended, some having suffered a somewhat shorter period but a greater weight of misery than the judges had contemplated in their several sentences; and others being so shaken and depressed by separate confinement pushed to excess that their life and reason now stood in peril for want of open air, abundant light, and free intercourse with their species. At the head of these was poor Strutt, an old man crushed to clay by separate confinement recklessly applied. So alarming was this man’s torpor to Mr. Eden that after trying in vain to interest him in the garden, that observer ventured on a very strong measure. He had learned from Strutt that he could play the fiddle; what does he do but runs and fetches his own violin into the garden, tunes it, and plays some most inspiriting, rollicking old English tunes to him! A spark came into the fishy eye of Strutt. At the third tune the old fellow’s fingers began to work impatiently. Mr. Eden broke off directly, put fiddle and bow into Strutt’s hand, and ran off to the prison again to arrest melancholy, despair, lunacy, stagnation, mortification, putrefaction, by every art that philosophy and mother-wit could suggest to Christianity.

This determined man had collected his teaching mechanics again, and he had them all into the prison the moment Hawes was out. He could not get the cranks condemned as monsters–the day was not yet come for that; so he got them condemned as liars, and in their place tasks of rational and productive labor were set to most of the prisoners, and London written to for six more trades and arts.

A copy of the prison-rules was cut into eight portions and eight female prisoners set to compose each her portion. Copies to be printed on the morrow and put up in every cell, according to the wise provision of Rule 10, defied by the late jailer for an obvious reason. Thus in an hour after the body of Hawes had passed through that gate a firm and adroit hand was wiping his gloomy soul out of the cells as we wipe a blotch of ink off a written page.

Care, too, was taken every prisoner should know the late jailer was gone forever. This was done to give the wretches a happy night. Ejaculations of thanksgiving burst from the cells every now and then; by some mysterious means the immured seemed to share the joyful tidings with their fellows, and one pulse of hope and triumph to beat and thrill through all the life that wasted and withered there encased in stone; and until sunset the faint notes of a fiddle struggled from the garden into the temple of silence and gloom, and astounded every ear.

The merry tunes as Strutt played them sounded like dirges, but they enlivened him as they sighed forth. They stirred his senses, and through his senses his mind, and through his mind his body, and so the anthropologist made a fiddle help save a life, which fact no mortal man will believe whose habit it is to chatter blindfold about man and investigate the “crustaceonidunculae.”

The cranks being condemned, rational industry restored, and the law reseated on the throne a manslaughtering dunce had usurped, the champion of human nature went home to drink his tea and write the plot of his sermon.

He had won a great battle and felt his victory. He showed it, too, in his own way. On the evening of this great day his voice was remarkably gentle and winning, and a celestial light seemed to dwell in his eyes; no word of exultation, nor even of self-congratulation; and he made no direct mention of the prison all the evening. His talk was about Susan’s affairs, and he paid his warm thanks to her and her aunt for all they had done for him. “You have been true friends, true allies,” said he; “what do I not owe you! you have supported me in a bitter struggle, and now that the day is won I can find no words to thank you as I ought.”

Both these honest women colored and glistened with pleasure, but they were too modest to be ready with praise or to bandy compliments.

“As for you, Susan, it was a masterstroke your venturing into my den.”

“Oh! we turn bold when a body is ill, don’t we, aunt?”

“I am not shy for one at the best of times,” remarked the latter.

“Under Heaven you saved my life, at least I think so, Susan, for the medicinal power of soothing influences is immense, I am sure it is apt to be underrated; and then it was you who flew to Malvern and dragged Gulson to me at the crisis of my fate; dear little true-hearted friend, I am sorry to think I can never repay you.”

“You forget, Mr. Eden,” said Susan, almost in a whisper, “I was paid beforehand.”

I wish I could convey the native grace and gentle dignity of gratitude with which the farmer’s daughter murmured these four words, like a duchess acknowledging a kindness.

“Eh?” inquired Mr. Eden, “oh! ah! I forgot,” said he naively. “No! that is nonsense, Susan. You have still an immense Cr. against my name; but I know a way–Mrs. Davies, for as simple as I sit here you see in me the ecclesiastic that shall unite this young lady to an honest man, who, report says, loves her very dearly; so I mean to square our little account.”

“That is fair, Susan; what do you say?”

“La, aunt! why I shouldn’t look upon it as a marriage at all if any clergyman but Mr. Eden said the words.”

“That is right,” laughed Mr. Eden, “always set some little man above some great thing, and then you will always be–a woman. I must write the plot of my sermon, ladies, but you can talk to me all the same.”

He wrote and purred every now and then to the women, who purred to each other and now and then to him. Neither Hawes nor any other irritation rankled in his heart, or even stuck fast in his memory. He had two sermons to prepare for Sunday next, and he threw his mind into them as he had into the battle he had just won. “Hoc agebat.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

His reverence in the late battle showed himself a strategist, and won without bringing up his reserves; if he had failed with Mr. Lacy he had another arrow behind in his quiver. He had been twice to the mayor and claimed a coroner’s jury to sit on a suicide. The mayor had consented and the preliminary steps had been taken.

The morning after the jailer’s dismissal the inquest was held. Mr. Eden, Evans, Fry and others were examined, and the case came out as clear as the day and black as the night.

When twelve honest Englishmen, men of plain sense, not men of system, men taken from the public not from public offices, sat in a circle with the corpse of a countryman at their knees, fiebat lux; ’twas as though twelve suns had burst into a dust-hole.

“Manslaughter!” cried they, and they sent their spokesman to the mayor and said yet more light must be let into this dusthole, and the mayor said, “Ay and it shall, too. I will write to London and demand more light.” And the men of the public went to their own homes and told their wives and children and neighbors what cruelties and villainies they had unearthed, and their hearers, being men and women of that people, which is a god in intellect and in heart compared with the criticasters that try to misguide it with their shallow guesses and cant and with the clerks that execute it in other men’s names, cried out, “See now! What is the use our building courts of law or prisons unless they are to be open unto us. Shut us out–keep walls and closed gate between us and our servants–and what comes of our courts of law and our prisons? Why they turn nests of villainy in less than no time.”

The twelve honest Englishmen had hardly left the jail an hour, crying “manslaughter!” and crying “shame!” when all in a moment “TOMB!” fell a single heavy stroke of the great prison bell. The heart of the prison leaped, and then grew cold–a long chill pause, then “TOMB!” again. The jurymen had told most of his fellow-sufferers how Josephs was driven into his grave–and now–

“TOMB!” the remorseless iron tongue crashed out one by one the last sad, stern monosyllables of this sorrowfulest of human tales.

They put him in his coffin (“TOMB!”) a boy of sixteen, who would be alive now but that caitiffs, whom God confound on earth, made life an _impossibility_ to him (“TOMB!”), and that Shallows and Woodcocks, whom God confound on earth, and unconscientious non-inspecting inspectors, flunkeys, humbugs, hirelings, whom God confound on earth (“TOMB!”), left these scoundrels month after month and year after year unwatched, though largely paid by the queen and the people to watch them (“TOMB!”). Look on your work, hirelings, and listen to that bell, which would not be tolling now if you had been men of brains and scruples instead of sordid hirelings. The priest was on his knees, praying for help from heaven to go through the last sad office with composure, for he feared his own heart when he should come to say “ashes to ashes” and “dust to dust” over this hapless boy, that ought to be in life still. And still the great bell tolled, and many of the prisoners were invited kindly in a whisper to come into the chapel; but Fry could not be spared and Hodges fiercely refused. And now the bell stopped, and as it stopped, the voice of the priest arose, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

A deep and sad gloom was upon all as the last sad offices were done for this poor young creature cut short by foul play in the midst of them. And for all he could do the priest’s voice trembled often, and a heavy sigh mingled more than once with the holy words.

What is that? “THIS OUR BROTHER!”–a thief our brother?–ay! the priest made no mistake, those were the words; pause on them. Two great characters contradicted each other to the face over dead Josephs. Unholy State said, “Here is the carcass of a thief whom I and society honestly believe to be of no more importance than a dog–so it has unfortunately got killed between us, no matter how; take this carcass and bury it,” said unholy State. Holy Church took the poor abused remains with reverence, prayed over them as she prays over the just, and laid them in the earth, calling them “this our brother.” Judge now which is all in the wrong, unholy State or holy Church–for both cannot be right.

Now while the grave is being filled in, judge, women of England and America, between these two–unholy State and holy Church. The earth contains no better judges of this doubt than you. Judge and I will bow to your verdict with a reverence I know male cliques too well to feel for them in a case where the great capacious heart alone can enlighten the clever, little, narrow, shallow brain.

Thus in the nineteenth century–in a kind-hearted nation–under the most humane sovereign the world has ever witnessed on an earthly throne–holy Church in vain denouncing the miserable sinners that slay the thief their brother–Edward Josephs has been done to death in the queen’s name–in the name of England–and in the name of the law.

But each of these great insulted names has its sworn defenders, its honored and paid defenders. It is not for us to suppose that men so high in honor will lay aside themselves and turn curs.

Ere I close this long story, let us hope I shall be able to relate with what zeal and honor statesmen disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in the name of the State; and with what zeal and horror judges disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in their name; and so, in all good men’s eyes, washed off the blood with which a hireling had bespattered the state ermine and the snow-white robe of law.

For the present, the account between Josephs and the law stands thus:–Josephs has committed the smallest theft imaginable. He has stolen food. For this the law, professing to punish him with certain months’ imprisonment, has inflicted capital punishment; has overtasked, crucified, starved–overtasked, starved, crucified–robbed him of light, of sleep, of hope, of life; has destroyed his body, and perhaps his soul. Sum total–1st page of account–

Josephs a larcenist and a corpse. The law a liar and a felon.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JOSEPHS has dropped out of our story. Mr. Hawes has got himself kicked out of our story. The other prisoners, of whom casual mention has been made, were never in our story, any more than the boy Xury in “Robinson Crusoe.” There remains to us in the prison Mr. Eden and Robinson, a saint and a thief.

My readers have seen how the saint has saved the thief’s life. They shall guess awhile how on earth Susan Merton can be affected by that circumstance. They have seen a set of bipeds acting on the notion that all prisoners are incurable: they have seen a thief, thus despaired of, driven toward despair, and almost made incurable through being thought so. Then they have seen this supposed incurable fall into the hands of a Christian that held “it is never too late to mend;” and generally I think that, feebly as my pen has drawn so great a character, they can calculate, by what Mr. Eden has already done, what he will do while I am with Susan and George; what love, what eloquence, what ingenuity he will move to save this wandering sheep, to turn this thief honest and teach him how to be honest yet not starve.

I will ask my reader to bear in mind, that the good and wise priest has no longer his hands tied by a jailer in the interest of the foul fiend. But then, against all this, is to be set the slippery heart of a thief, a thief almost from his cradle. Here are great antagonist forces and they will be in daily almost hourly collision for months to come. In life nothing stands still; all this will work goodward or badward. I must leave it to work.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. EDEN’S health improved so visibly that Susan Merton announced her immediate return to her father. It was a fixed idea in this young lady’s mind that she and Mrs. Davies had no business in the house of a saint upon earth, as she called Mr. Eden, except as nurses.

The parting of attached friends has always a touch of sadness needless to dwell on at this time. Enough that these two parted as brother and young sister, and a spiritual adviser and advised, with warm expressions of Christian amity, and an agreement on Susan’s part to write for advice and sympathy whenever needed.

On her arrival at Grassmere Farm there was Mr. Meadows to greet her. “Well, that is attentive!” cried Susan. There was also a stranger to her, a Mr. Clinton.

As nothing remarkable occurred this evening, we may as well explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones. No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment. He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle’s and a bat’s; with the first he looked at the “pros,” and with the second at the “cons” of a spec.

He was an old acquaintance of Meadows, and had come thirty miles out of the way to show him how to make 100 per cent without the shadow of a risk. Meadows declined to violate the laws of Nature, but, said he, “If you like to stay a day or two I will introduce you to one or two who have money to fling away.” And he introduced him to Mr. Merton. Now that worthy had a fair stock of latent cupidity, and Mr. Clinton was the man to tempt it.

In a very few conversations he convinced the farmer that there were a hundred ways of making money, all of them quicker than the slow process of farming and the unpleasant process of denying one’s self superfluities and growing saved pennies into pounds.

“What do you think, John,” said Merton one day to Meadows, “I have got a few hundreds loose. I’m half minded to try and turn them into thousands for my girl’s sake. Mr. Clinton makes it clear, don’t you think?”

“Well, I don’t know,” was the reply. “I have no experience in that sort of thing, but it certainly looks well the way he puts it.”

In short, Meadows did not discourage his friend from co-operating with Mr. Clinton; for his own part he spoke him fair, and expressed openly a favorable opinion of his talent and his various projects, and always found some excuse or other for not risking a halfpenny with him.

CHAPTER XXX.

ONE day Mr. Meadows walked into the post-office of Farnborough and said to Jefferies, the postmaster, “A word with you in private, Mr. Jefferies.”

“Certainly, Mr. Meadows–come to my back parlor, sir; a fine day, Mr. Meadows, but I think we shall have a shower or two.”

“Shouldn’t wonder. Do you know this five-pound note?”

“Can’t say I do.”

“Why it has passed through your hands?”

“Has it? well a good many of them pass through my hands in the course of the year. I wish a few of ’em would stop on the road.”

“This one did. It stuck to your fingers, as the phrase goes.”

“I don’t know what you mean, sir,” said Jefferies haughtily.

“You stole it,” explained Meadows quietly.

“Take care,” cried Jefferies in a loud quaver–” Take care what you say! I’ll have my action of defamation against you double quick if you dare to say such a thing of me.”

“So be it. You will want witnesses. Defamation is no defamation you know till the scandal is published. Call in your lodger.”

“Ugh!”

“And call your wife!” cried Meadows, raising his voice in turn.

“Heaven forbid! Don’t speak so loud, for goodness’ sake!”

“Hold your tongue then and don’t waste my time with your gammon,” said Meadows sternly. Then resuming his former manner he went on in the tone of calm explanation. “One or two in this neighborhood lost money coming through the post. I said to myself, ‘Jefferies is a man that often talks of his conscience–he will be the thief–so I baited six traps for you, and you took five. This note came over from Ireland; you remember it now?”

“I am ruined! I am ruined!”

“You changed it at Evans’ the grocer’s; you had four sovereigns and silver for it. The other baits were a note and two sovereigns and two half sovereigns. You spared one sovereign, the rest you nailed. They were all marked by Lawyer Crawley. They have been traced from your hand, and lie locked up ready for next assizes. Good-morning, Mr. Jefferies.”

Jefferies turned a cold jelly where he sat–and Meadows walked out, primed Crawley, and sent him to stroll in sight of the post-office.

Soon a quavering voice called Crawley into the post-office. “Come into my back parlor, sir. Oh! Mr. Crawley, can nothing be done? No one knows my misfortune but you and Mr. Meadows. It is not for my own sake, sir, but my wife’s. If she knew I had been tempted so far astray, she would never hold up her head again. Sir, if you and Mr. Meadows will let me off this once, I will take an oath on my bended knees never to offend again.”

“What good will that do me?” asked Crawley contemptuously.

“Ah!” cried Jefferies, a light breaking in, “will money make it right? I’ll sell the coat off my back.”

“Humph! If it was only me–but Mr. Meadows has such a sense of public duty, and yet–hum!–I know a way to influence him just now.”

“Oh, sir! do pray use your influence with him.”

“What will you do for me if I succeed?”

“Do for you?–cut myself in pieces to serve you.”

“Well, Jefferies, I’m undertaking a difficult task–to turn such a man as Meadows, but I will try it and I think I shall succeed; but I must have terms. Every letter that comes here from Australia you must bring to me with your own hands directly.”

“I will, sir, I will.”

“I shall keep it an hour or two perhaps, not more; and I shall take no money out of it.”

“I will do it, sir, and with pleasure. It is the least I can do for you.”

“And you must find me 10 pounds.” The little rogue must do a bit on his own account.

“I must pinch to get it,” said Jefferies ruefully.

“Pinch then,” replied Crawley coolly; “and let me have it directly.”

“You shall–you shall–before the day is out.”

“And you must never let Meadows know I took this money of you.”

“No, sir, I won’t! is that all?”

“That is all.”

“Then I am very grateful, sir, and I won’t fail, you may depend.”

Thus the two battledores played with this poor little undetected one, whom his respectability no less than his roguery placed at their mercy.

CHAPTER XXXI.