“THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH.”

A Tract.

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

Presently the governor came up with his satellites.

“Take No. 19 out of his cell for punishment.”

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

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

No answer.

“Do you hear, ye sulky brute?”

No answer, but a glittering eye bent on Hawes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Anything but that,” cried he with trembling voice.

“Oh! you have found your tongue, have you?”

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

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

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

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

“I hear you,” replied the chaplain gravely and gently.

“You called us your brothers, you.”