“Ah!”

“I dare say he didn’t stop to think, you know; but I don’t envy him having done it.  Well, sir, he paid for it.  The girl just gave one sort of a yell—­you could not call it anything else—­and she went right at his head, both claws going and as quick one after another as a cat.  The blood squirted like a fountain—­I never saw anything like it.  She’d have killed him if it hadn’t been for Hodges and me.”

“Killed him? nonsense—­a great strong fellow!”

“No nonsense at all, sir.  She was stronger than he was for a moment or two and that moment would have done his business.  She meant killing.  Sir,” said Evans, lowering his voice, “her teeth were making for his jugular when I wrenched her away, and it was like tearing soul from body to get her off him, and she snarling and her teeth gnashing for him all the time.”

Mr. Eden winced.

“The wretched creature!  I was putting her on the way to heaven, and in one moment they made a fiend of her.  Evans, you are not the same man you were a month ago.”

“No, sir, that I am not.  When I think of what a brute I used to be to them poor creatures, I don’t seem to know myself.”

“What has changed you?”

“Oh, you know very well.”

“Do I?  No; I have a guess; but—­”

“Why your sermons, to be sure.”

“My sermons?”

“Yes, sir.  Why, how could I hear them and my heart be as hard as it used?  They would soften a stone.”

A faint streak of surprise and simple satisfaction crossed Mr. Eden’s sallow face.

“But it isn’t your sermons only—­it is your life, as the saying is.  I was no better than Hawes and Fry and the rest.  I used to look on a prisoner as so much dirt.  But when I saw a gentleman like you respect them, and say openly you loved them, I began to take a thought, and says I, Hallo! if his reverence respects them so, an ignorant brute like Jack Evans isn’t to look down on them.”

“Ah! confess, too, that half hour in the jacket opened your eyes and so your heart.”

“It did, sir; it did.  I was like a good many more that misuse prisoners.  I didn’t know how cruel I was.”

“You are on my side, then?”

“Yes, I am on your side, and I am come here mainly to speak my mind to you.  Sir, it goes to my heart to see you lost and wasted in such a place as this.”

“You think I do no good here?”

“No! no! sir.  Why I am a proof the other way.  But you would do more good anywhere else.  Everybody says you are a bright and a shining light, sir.  Then why stay where there is dirty water thrown over you every day?  Besides, it is killing you!  I don’t want to frighten you, sir; but if you could only see how you are changed since you came here—­”

“I do feel very ill.”

“Of course you do; you are ill, and you will be worse if you don’t get out of this dreadful place.  If you are so fond of prisons, sir, you can go from here to another prison.  There is more than one easy-going chaplain as would be glad to change with you.