“Be patient, and do not irritate the governor any more—­the storm will pass.”

He seemed to Josephs as one that mocketh.  Jones’s were such little words to fling in the face of a great despair; to chatter unreasonable consolation was to mock his unutterable misery of soul and body.

Mr. Jones was one of those who sprinkle a burning mountain with a teaspoonful of milk and water, and then go away and make sure they have put it out.  When he was gone with this impression, Evans took down the boy’s bed and said: 

“Don’t ye cry now like that; it makes me ill to hear any Christian cry like that.”

“Oh, Mr. Evans! oh! oh! oh! oh!  What have I done?  Oh, my mother! my mother! my mother!”

Evans winced.  What! had he a mother, too?  If she could see him now! and perhaps he was her darling though he was a prisoner.  He shook the bed-clothes out and took hold of the shivering boy and with kind force made him lie down; then he twisted the clothes tight round him.

“You will get warm, if you will but lie quiet and not think about it.”

Josephs did what he was bid.  He could not still his sobs, but he turned his mournful eyes on Evans with a look of wonder at meeting with kindness from a human being, and half doubtingly put out his hand.  So then Evans, to comfort him, took his hand and shook it several times in his hard palm, and said: 

“Good-night.  You’ll soon get warm, and don’t think of it—­that is the best way;” and Evans ran away in the middle of a sentence, for the look of astonishment the boy wore at his humanity went through the man’s penitent heart like an arrow.

Josephs lay quiet and his sobs began gradually to go down, and, as Evans had predicted, some little warmth began to steal over his frame; but he could not comply with all Evans’s instructions; he could not help thinking of it.  For all that, as soon as he got a little warm, Nature, who knew how much her tortured son needed repose, began to weigh down his eyelids, and he dozed.  He often started, he often murmured a prayer for pity as his mind acted over again the scenes of his miserable existence; but still he dozed, and sleep was stealing over him.  Sleep! life’s nurse sent from heaven to create us anew day by day!—­sleep! that has blunted and gradually cured a hundred thousand sorrows for one that has yielded to any moral remedy—­sleep! that has blunted and so cured by degrees a million fleshly ills for one that drugs or draughts have ever reached—­sleep had her arm round this poor child and was drawing him gently, gently, slowly, slowly to her bosom—­when suddenly his cell seemed to him to be all in a blaze, and a rough hand shook him, and a harsh voice sounded in his ear.

“Come, get up out of that, youngster,” it said, and the hand almost jerked him off the floor.

“What is the matter?” inquired Josephs yawning.

“Matter is, I want your bed.”