“I have never been hard upon you.  You ought to be here every day, but the pay is small and I have never insisted on it, because I said he can’t afford to leave patients that pay.”

“No, Mr. Hawes, and I am much obliged to you.”

“Are you?  Then tell me—­between ourselves now—­how ill is he?”

“He has got bilious fever consequent upon jaundice.”

Hawes lowered his voice.  “Is he in danger?”

“In danger?  Why, no, not at present.”

“Oh! then it is only an indisposition after all.”

“It is a great deal more than that—­it is fever and bile.”

“Can’t you tell me in two words how ill he is?”

“Not till I see how the case turns.”

“When will you be able to say then?”

“When the disorder declares itself more fully.”

Hawes exploded in an oath.  “You humbugs of doctors couldn’t speak plain to save yourselves from hanging.”

There was some truth in this ill-natured excuse.  After fifteen years given to the science of obscurity Mr. Sawyer literally could not speak plain all in one moment.

The next morning there was no service in the chapel, the chaplain was in bed.  This spoke for itself, and Hawes wore a look of grim satisfaction at the announcement.

But this was not all.  In the afternoon came a letter from Mr. Williams with a large inclosure signed by her majesty’s secretary’s secretary, and written by her secretary’s secretary’s secretary.

Its precise contents will be related elsewhere.  Its tendency may be gathered from this.

Hawes had no sooner read it than exultation painted itself on his countenance.

“Close the infirmary and bring me the key.  And you, Fry, put these numbers on the cranks to-morrow.”  He scribbled with his pencil, and gave him a long list of the proscribed.

No Mr. Eden shone now upon Mr. Robinson’s solitude.  He waited, and waited, and hoped till the day ended, but no!  The next day the same thing.  He longed for Mr. Eden’s hour to come; it came, but not with it came his one bit of sunshine, his excitement, his amusement, his consolation, his friend, his brother, his all.  And so one heavy day succeeded another, and Robinson became fretful, and very, very sad.  One day, as he sat disconsolate and foreboding in his cell, he heard a stranger’s voice talking to Fry outside.  And what was more strange, Fry appeared to be inviting this person to inspect the cells.  The next moment his door was opened, and a figure peeped timidly into the cell from behind Fry, whose arm she clutched in some anxiety.  Robinson looked up—­it was Susan Merton.  She did not instantly know him in his prison dress and his curly hair cut short; he hung his head, and this action and the recognition it implied made her recognize him.  “Oh!” cried she, “it is Mr. Robinson!”

The thief turned his face to the wall.  Even he was ashamed before one who had known him as Mr. Robinson; but the next moment he got up and said earnestly,