“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.