The man fell suddenly on his knees, took the dead boy’s hand in his left hand and held his right up, and in this strange attitude, which held all his hearers breathless, he poured out a terrible tale.

His boiling heart and the touch of him, whom now too late he defended like a man, gave him simple but real eloquence, and in few words, that scalded as they fell, he told as powerfully as I have feebly by what road Josephs had been goaded to death.

He brought the dark tale down to where he left the sufferer rolled up in the one comfort left him on earth, his bed; and then turning suddenly and leaving Josephs he said sternly: 

“And now, sir, ask the governor where is the bed I wrapped the wet boy up in, for it isn’t here.”

“You know as much as I do!” was Hawes’s sulky reply.

But at this moment Hodges came into the cell with the bed in question in his arms.

“There is his bed,” cried he, “and what is the use of it now?  If you had left it him last night it would be better for him and for me, too,” and he flung the bed on the floor.

“Oh! it was you took it from him, was it?” said Evans.

“Well, I am here to obey orders, Jack Evans; do you do nothing but what you like in this place?”

“Let there be no disputing in presence of death!”

“No, sir.”

“One thing only is worth knowing or thinking of now; whether there is hope for this our brother in that world to which he has passed all unprepared.  Hodges, you saw him last alive!”

Hodges groaned.  “I saw him last at night, and first in the morning.”

“I entreat you to remember all that passed at night between you!”

“Then cover up his face—­it draws my eyes to it.”

Mr. Eden covered the dead face gently with his handkerchief.

“Mr. Hawes met me in the corridor and sent me to take away his bed.  I found him dozing, and I took—­I did what I was ordered.”

Mr. Eden sighed.

“Tell me what he said and did.”

“Well, sir! when I showed him the order, ’fourteen days without bed and gas,’ he bursts out a laughing—­”

“Good heavens!”

“And says he, ’I don’t say for gas, but you tell Mr. Hawes I shan’t be without bed nothing nigh so long as that.’”

Mr. Eden and Evans exchanged a meaning glance; so did Fry and Hawes.

“Then I said, ’No!  I shan’t tell Mr. Hawes anything to make him punish you any more, because you are punished too much as it is,’ says I—­”

“I am glad you said that.  But tell me what he said.  Did he complain? did he use angry or bitter words?—­you make me drag it out of you.”

“No! he didn’t!  He wasn’t one of that sort!  The next thing was, he asked me to give him my hand.  Well, I was surprised like at his asking for my hand, and I doing him such an ill-turn.  So then he said, ’Mr. Hodges,’ says he, ’why not?  I never took away your bed from under you, so you can give me your hand, if I can give you mine.’”