“I did, and do.”

“Well, then, here is one of your brothers being taken to hell before your eyes.  I go there a man, but I shall come out a beast, and that cowardly murderer by your side knows it, and you have not a word to say.  That is all a poor fellow gets by being your brother.  My curse on you all! butchers and hypocrites!”

“Give him twelve hours more for that,” roared Hawes. “——­ his eyes, I’ll break him, ——­ him.”

“Ah,” yelled the thief, “you curse me, do you? d’ye hear that?  The son of a ——­ appeals to Heaven against me!  What? does this lump of dirt believe there is a God?  Then there must be one.”  Then suddenly flinging himself on his knees, he cried, “If there is a God who pities them that suffer, I cry to Him on my knees to torture you as you torture us.  May your name be shame, may your life be pain, and your death loathsome!  May your skin rot from your flesh, your flesh from your bones, your bones from your body, and your soul split forever on the rock of damnation!”

“Take him away,” yelled Hawes, white as a sheet.

They tore him away by force, still threatening his persecutor with outstretched hand and raging voice and blazing eyes, and flung him into the dark dungeon.

“Cool yourself there, ye varmint,” said Fry spitefully.  Even his flesh crept at the man’s blasphemies.

Meantime, the chaplain had buried his face in his hands, and trembled like a woman at the frightful blasphemies and passions of these two sinners.

“I’ll make this place hell to him.  He shan’t need to go elsewhere,” muttered Hawes aloud between his clinched teeth.

The chaplain groaned.

The governor heard him and turned on him:  “Well, parson, you see he doesn’t thank you for interfering between him and me.  He would rather have had an hour or two of the jacket and have done with it.”

The chaplain sighed.  He felt weighed down in spirit by the wickedness both of Hawes and of Robinson.  He saw it was in vain at that moment to try to soften the former in favor of the latter.  He moved slowly away.  Hawes eyed him sneeringly.

“He is down upon his luck,” thought Hawes; “his own fault for interfering with me.  I liked the man well enough, and showed it, if he hadn’t been a fool and put his nose into my business.”

Half an hour had scarce elapsed when the chaplain came back.

“Mr. Hawes, I come to you as a petitioner.”

“Indeed!” said Hawes, with a supercilious sneer very hard to bear.

The other would not notice it.  “Pray, do not think I side with a refractory prisoner if I beg you, not to countermand, but to modify Robinson’s punishment.”

“What for?”

“Because he cannot bear so many hours of the dark cell.”

“Nonsense, sir.”

“Is it too much to ask that you will give him six hours a day for four days instead of twenty-four at a stretch?”