Up to this moment Hawes had worn a quiet, malicious grin.  At last his rage broke through this veil.  He turned round black as night upon the chaplain, who was bending toward him in earnest gasping yet sweet and gentle supplication.

“The vagabond insulted me before all my servants, and that is why you take his part.  He would send me to hell if he had the upper hand.  I’ve got the upper hand, and so he shall taste it instead of me, till he goes down on his marrowbones to me with my foot on his viper’s tongue. ——­ him!”

“Oh! do not curse him, above all now that he is in trouble and defenseless.”

“Let me alone, sir, and I’ll let you,” retorted Hawes savagely.  “If I curse him you can pray for him.  I don’t hinder you.  Good-night;” and Mr. Hawes turned his back very rudely.

“I will pray for him—­and for you!”

“Ugh!”

So then the chaplain retired sorrowfully to his private room, and here, sustained no longer by action, his high-tuned nature gave way.  A cold languor came over him.  He locked the door that no one might see his weakness, and then, succumbing to nature, he fell first into a sickness and then into a trembling, and more than once hysterical tears gushed from his eyes in the temporary prostration of his spirit and his powers.

Such are the great.  Men know their feats but not their struggles!

Meantime Robinson lay in the dark cell with a morsel of bread and water, and no bed or chair, that hunger and unrest might co-operate with darkness and solitude to his hurt.  To this horrid abode it is now our fate to follow a thief and a blasphemer.  We must pass his gloomy portal, over which might have been inscribed what Dante has written over the gates of hell: 

“ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE—­ABANDON HOPE!!”

At six o’clock Robinson was thrust in, and his pittance of bread and water with him; the door, which fitted like mosaic, was closed.  The steps retreated carrying away hope and human kind; there was silence, and the man shivered in the thick black air that seemed a fluid, not an atmosphere.

When the door closed his heart was yet beating with rage and wild desire of vengeance.  He nursed this rage as long as he could, but the thick darkness soon cooled him and cowed him.  He sat down upon the floor, he ate his pittance very slowly, two mouthfuls a minute.  “I will be an hour eating it,” said he, “and then an hour will have passed.”  He thought he was an hour eating it, but in reality he was scarce twenty minutes.  The blackness seemed to smother him.  “I will shut it out,” said he.  He took out his handkerchief and wrapped his head in it.  “What a weak fool I am,” cried he, “when we are asleep it does not matter to us light or dark; I will go to sleep.”  He lay down, his head still wrapped up, and tried to sleep.  So passed the first hour.