“I really don’t see my way through this,” said Mr. Lacy.  “Let us come to something tangible.  What is this punishment jacket that leaves marks of personal violence on so many prisoners?”

Now Hawes had been looking for this machine to hide it, but to his surprise neither he nor Fry could find it.

“Evans, fetch the infernal machine.”

“Yes, your reverence.”  Evans brought the jacket, straps and collar from a cell where he had hidden them by Mr. Eden’s orders.  “You play the game pretty close, parson,” said Mr. Hawes, with an attempt at a sneer.

“I play to win.  I am playing for human lives.  This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather.  However, it works thus:  The man being in the jacket its back straps are drawn so tight that the sufferer’s breath is impeded, and his heart, lungs and liver are forced into unnatural contact.  You stare.  I must inform you that Nature is a wonderfully close packer.  Did you ever unpack a human trunk of its stomach, liver, lungs and heart, and then try to replace them?  I have; and, believe me, as no gentleman can pack like a shopman, so no shopman can pack like Nature.  The victim’s body and organs being crushed these two long straps fasten him so tight to the wall that he cannot move to ease the frightful cramps that soon attack him.  Then steps in by way of climax this collar, three inches and a half high.  See, it is as stiff as iron, and the miscreants have left the edges unbound that it may do the work of a man-saw as well as a garotte.  In this iron three-handed gripe the victim writhes and sobs and moans with anguish, and, worse than all, loses his belief in God.”

“This is a stern picture,” said Mr. Lacy, hanging his head.

“Until what with the freezing of the blood in a body jammed together and flattened against a wall—­what with the crushed respiration and the cowed heart a deadly faintness creeps over the victim and he swoons away!”

“Oh!”

“It is a lie—­a base, malignant lie!” shouted Hawes.

“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hawes.”

Here the justices with great beat joined in and told Mr. Lacy he would be much to blame if he accepted any statement made against so respectable a man as Mr. Hawes.  Then they all turned indignantly on Mr. Eden.  That gentleman’s eyes sparkled with triumph.

“I have been trying a long time to make him speak, but he was too cunning.  It is a lie, is it?”

“Yes, it is a lie.”

“What is a lie?”

“The whole thing.”

“Give me your book, Mr. Hawes.  What do you mean by ’the punishment-jacket,’ an entry that appears so constantly here in your handwriting?”

“I never denied the jacket.”

“Then what is the lie of which you have accused me?  Show me—­that I may ask your pardon and His I serve for so great a sin as a lie.”