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

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

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

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

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

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

“What is amiss?” asked the chaplain.

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

“How could he do that?”

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

“But the colors—­how could he get them?”

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

“More evil, I conclude you mean?”

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

“Leave one red card and one black with me.”

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