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

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

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

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

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

“What do you mean? do you fear for his reason?”

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

“Ah!”

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

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

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

“Why am I not fit for it?”

“Too good for it, sir.”

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

“Trembled, did he, and never spoke?”

“Yes!—­Well?”

“I’m thinking, sir!  I’m thinking.  You didn’t touch him?”

“Touch him, no; what should I touch him for?”

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

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

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