“I can’t go on much longer like this.”

“No more can I.”

“I shall go to father.”

“Why where is he?”

“He is dead.”

“I don’t care how soon I go there either, but not till I have sent Hawes on before—­not for all the world.  Pass me, and then come back.”

They met again.

“Keep up your heart, boy, till his reverence gets well, or goes to heaven.  If he lives he will save us somehow.  If he dies—­I’ll tell you a secret.  I know where there is a brick I think I can loosen.  I mean to smash that beast’s skull with it, and then you will be all right, and my heart will feel like a prince.”

“Oh! don’t do that,” said Josephs piteously.  “Better far us he should murder us than we him.”

“Murder!” cried Robinson contemptuously.  And there was no time to say any more.

After this many days passed before these two could get a syllable together.  But one day after chapel as the men were being told off to their several tasks Robinson recognized the boy by his figure, and jogging his elbow withdrew a little apart; Josephs followed him, and this time Robinson was the first speaker.

“We shall never see Mr. Eden alive again, boy,” said he in a faltering voice.  Then in a low gloomy tone he muttered, “I have loosened the brick.  The day I lose all hope that day I send Hawes home.”  And the thief pointed toward the cellar.

“The day you have no more hope, Robinson; that day has come to me this fortnight and more.  He tells me every day he will make my life hell to me, and I am sure it has been nothing else ever since I came here.”

“Keep up your heart, boy; he hasn’t long to live.”

“He will live too long for me.  I can’t stay here any longer.  You and I shan’t often chat together again; perhaps never.”

“Don’t talk so, laddie.  Keep up your heart—­for my sake.”

One bitter tearing sob was all the reply.  And so these two parted.

This was just after breakfast.  At dinner-time Josephs, not having performed an impossible task, was robbed of his dinner.  A little bread and water was served out to him in the yard, and he was set on the crank again with fearful menaces.  In particular Mr. Hawes repeated his favorite threat—­“I’ll make your life hell to you.”  Josephs groaned; but what could a boy of fifteen do, overtasked and famished for a month past and fitter now for a hospital than for hard labor of any sort?  At three o’clock his progress on the crank was so slow that Mr. Hawes ordered him to be crucified on the spot.

His obedient myrmidons for the fiftieth time seized the lad and crushed him in the jacket, throttled him in the collar, and pinned him to the wall, and this time, the first time for a long while, the prisoner remonstrated loudly.

“Why not kill me at once and put me out of my misery!”

“Hold your tongue.”

“You know I can’t do the task you set me.  You know it as well as I do.”