“Oh! what a beautiful nature!  Ah! these are golden words.  I hope for the credit of human nature you gave him your hand?”

“Why, of course I did, sir.  I had no malice; it was ignorance, and owing to being so used to obey the governor.”

Here Mr. Hawes, who had remained quiet all this time, now absorbed in his own reflections, now listening sullenly to these strange scenes in which the dead boy seemed for a time to have eclipsed his importance, burst angrily in.

“I have listened patiently to you, Mr. Eden, to see how far you would go; but I see if I wait till you leave off undermining me with my servants, I may wait a long while.”

Mr. Eden turned round impatiently.

“You! who thinks of you or such as you in presence of such a question as lies here.  I am trying to learn the fate of this immortal soul, and I did not see you—­or think of you—­or notice you were here.”

“That is polite!  Well, sir, the governor is somebody in most jails, but it seems he is to be nobody here so long as you are in it, and that won’t be long.  Come, Fry, we have other duties to attend to.”  So saying he and his lieutenant went out of the cell.

Hodges went, too, but not with them.

The moment they were gone—­” Well, sir,” burst out Evans, “don’t you see that the real murderer is not that stupid, ignorant owl, Hodges?”

“Hush!  Evans! this is no time or place for unkindly thoughts; thank Heaven that you are free from their guilt, and leave me alone with him.”

He was left alone with the dead.

Evans looked through the peep-hole of the cell an hour later.  He was still on his knees fearing, hoping, vowing, and, above all, praying—­beside the dead.

CHAPTER XXII.

MR. EDEN, when he reappeared in the prison, was sallow and his limbs feeble, but his fatal disease was baffled, and a few words are due to explain how this happened.  The Malvern doctor came back with Susan within twenty hours of her departure.  She ushered him into Mr. Eden’s room with blushing joy and pride.

The friends shook hands.  Mr. Eden thanked him for coming, and the doctor cut him short by demanding an accurate history of his disorder, and the remedies that had been applied.  Mr. Eden related the rise and progress of his complaint, and meantime the doctor solved the other query by smelling a battalion of empty phials.

“The old story,” said he with a cheerful grin.  “You were weak—­therefore they gave you things to weaken you.  You could not put so much nourishment as usual into your body—­therefore they have been taking strength out.  Lastly, the coats of your stomach were irritated by your disorder—­so they have raked it like blazes.  This is the mill-round of the old medicine; from irritation to inflammation, from inflammation to mortification, and decease of the patient.  Now, instead of irritating the irritated spot, suppose we try a little counter-irritation.”