Evans looked suddenly up, for his mind was relieved by Mr. Hawes’s moderation; he looked up and saw a cold, stern eye dwelling on him with a meaning that had nothing to do with the words spoken.

Small natures read one another.

Evans saw his fate inscribed in Hawes’s eye.

CHAPTER XVI.

HAWES and Fry sat in council.  A copy of the prison rules was before them, and the more they looked at them after Mr. Eden’s interpretation, the less they liked them:  they were severe and simple; stringent against the prisoners on certain points; stringent in their favor on others.

“The sick-list must go to the infirmary, I believe,” said Hawes, thoughtfully.  “He’d beat us there.  The justices will support me on every other point, because they must contradict themselves else.  I’ll have that fellow out of the jail, Fry, before a month is out, and meantime what can I do to be revenged on him?”

“Punish ’em all the more,” suggested the simple-minded Fry.

“No, that won’t do; better keep a little quiet now till he is out of the jail.  Fine it would look if he was really to bribe these vermin to bring actions against me, and subpoena himself and that sneaking dog, Evans.”

“Well, sir, but if you turn him out he will do it all the more.”

“You fool, can’t you see the difference?  If he comes into court a servant of the crown every lie he tells will go for gospel.  But if he comes a disgraced servant, cashiered for refractory conduct, why then we could tell the jury it is all his spite at being turned off.”

“You know a thing or two, sir,” whined the doleful Fry.

Hawes passed him a fresh tumbler of grog, and pondered deeply and anxiously.  But suddenly an idea flashed on him that extinguished his other meditations.  “Give me the rules.”  He ran his eye rapidly over them.  “Why, no! of course not, what a fool I was not to see that half an hour ago.”

“What is it, sir?”

“Finish your grog first, and then I have a job for you.”  He sat down and wrote two lines on a slip of paper.

“Have you done?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then take this order.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the printed rules in your hand—­here, take ’em.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And take Hodges and Evans with you, and tell me every word that sneaking dog, Evans, says and everything he does.”

“Yes, sir.  But what are we all three to do?”

“Execute this order!”

An ebullition of wrath was as rare with Mr. Eden as an eruption of Vesuvius.  His deep-rooted indignation against cruelty remained; it was a part of his nature.  But his ruffled feathers smoothed themselves the moment little Hawes & Co. were out of his eye.  He even said to himself, “What is the matter with me? one moment so despondent, the next irascible.  I hardly know myself.  I must take a little of