The bucket was at hand—­its contents were instantly discharged over Josephs’ head.

A cry like a dying hare—­two or three violent gasps—­and he was quiet, all but a strong shiver that passed from head to foot; only with the water that now trickled from his hair down his face scalding tears from his young eyes fell to the ground undistinguished from the water by any eye but God’s.

At six o’clock Hawes came into the yard and ordered Fry to take him down.  Fry took this opportunity of informing against Evans for his mild interference.

“He will pay for that along with the rest,” said Hawes with an oath.

Then he turned on Josephs, who halted stiffly by him on his way to his cell.

“I’ll make your life hell to you, you young vagabond—­you are hardly used, are you? all you have ever known isn’t a stroke with a feather to what I’ll make you know by-and-by.  Wait till to-morrow comes, you shall see what I can do when I am put to it.”

Josephs sobbed, but answered nothing, and crawled sore, stiff, dripping, shivering to his cell.  In that miserable hole he would at least be at peace.

He found the gas lighted.  He was glad, for he was drenched through and bitterly cold.  He crept up to the little gaslight and put his dead white hands over it and got a little warmth into them; he blessed this spark of light and warmth; he looked lovingly down on it, it was his only friend in the jail, his companion in the desolate cell.  He wished he could gather it into his bosom; then it would warm his heart and his blighted flesh and aching, shivering bones.

While he hung shivering over his spark of light and warmth and comfort, a key was put into his door.  “Ah! here’s supper,” thought he, “and I am so hungry.”  It was not supper, it was Fry who came in empty-handed, leaving the door open.  Fry went to his gaslight and put his finger and thumb on the screw.

“Oh! it burns all right, Mr. Fry,” said Josephs, “it won’t go any higher, thank you.”

“No, it won’t,” said Fry dryly, and turned it out, leaving the cell in utter darkness.

“There, I told you so,” said Josephs pettishly, “now you have been and turned it out.”

“Yes, I have been and turned it out,” replied Fry with a brutal laugh, “and it won’t be turned on again for fourteen days, so the governor says, however, and I suppose he knows,” and Fry went out chuckling.

Josephs burst out sobbing and almost screaming at this last stroke; it seemed to hurt him more than his fiercer tortures.  He sobbed so wildly and so loud that Mr. Jones, passing on the opposite corridor, heard him and beckoned to Evans to open the cell.

They found the boy standing in the middle of his dungeon shaking with cold in his drenched clothes and sobbing with his whole body.  It was frightful to see and hear the agony and despair of one so young in years, so old in misery.

Mr. Jones gave him words of commonplace consolation.  Mr. Jones tried to persuade him that patience was the best cure.