“It is a lie to say that the jacket tortures the prisoners and makes them faint away; it only confines them.  You want to make me out a villain, but it is your own bad heart that makes you think so or say so without thinking it.”

“Now, Mr. Lacy, I think we have caught our eel.  This, then, is the ground you take; if it were true that this engine, instead of merely confining men, tortured them to fainting, then you say you would be a villain.  You hesitate, sir; can’t you afford to admit that, after all?”

“Yes, I can.”

“But on the other hand you say it is untrue that this engine tortures?”

“I do.”

“Prove that by going into it for one hour.  I have seen you put a man in it for six.”

“Now, do you really think I am going to make myself a laughing-stock to the whole prison?”

“Well, but consider what a triumph you are denying yourself to prove me a liar and yourself a true man.  It would be the greatest feat of dialects the world ever saw; and you need not stand on your dignity—­better men than you have been in it, and there goes one of them.  Here, Evans, come this way.  We want you to go into the punishment-jacket.”  The man recoiled with a ludicrous face of disgust and dismay.  Mr. Lacy smiled.

“Now, your reverence, don’t think of it.  I don’t want to earn no more guineas that way.”

“What does he mean?” asked Mr. Lacy.

“I gave him a guinea to go into it for half an hour, and he calls it a hard bargain.”

“Oh, you have been in it, then?  Tell me, is it torture or is it only confinement?”

“Con-finement! con-found such confinement, I say.  Yes, it is torture and the worst of torture.  Ask his reverence, he has been in the oven as well as me.”

Mr. Lacy opened his eyes wide.

“What!” said he, with a half grin, “have you been in it?”

“That he has, sir,” said Evans, grinning out in return.  “Bless you, his reverence is not the one to ask a poor man to stand any pain he daren’t face himself.”

“There, there, we don’t want to hear about his reverence,” said his reverence very sharply.  “Mr. Hawes says it is not torture, and therefore he won’t face it.  ‘It is too laughable and painless for me,’ says slippery Mr. Hawes.  ’It is torture, and therefore I won’t face it,’ says the more logical Mr. Evans.  But we can cut this knot for you, Mr. Lacy.  There are in this dungeon a large body of men so steeped in misery, so used to torture for their daily food, that they will not be so nice as Messrs. Hawes and Evans.  ’Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.’  Follow me, sir; and as we go pray cast your eyes over the prison rules, and see whether you can find ‘a punishment-jacket.’  No, sir, you will not find even a Spanish collar, or a pillory, or a cross, far less a punishment-jacket which combines those several horrors.”

Mr. Hawes hung back and begged a word with the justices.  “Gentlemen, you have always been good friends to me—­give me a word of advice, or at least let me know your pleasure.  Shall I resign—­shall I fling my commission in this man’s face who comes here to usurp your office and authority?”