“Your superior in the department of instruction, I mean.  Can you doubt that he is so with these rules before you?  Let me read you one of them:  ’Rule 18.  All prisoners, including those sentenced to hard labor, are to have such time allowed them for instruction as the chaplain may think proper, whether such instruction withdraw them from their labor for a time or not.’  And again, by ’Rule 80.  Each prisoner is to have every means of moral and religious instruction the chaplain shall select for each as suitable.’  So that you have passed out of your own department into a higher department, which was a breach of discipline, and you have affronted the head of that department and strained your authority to undermine his, and this in the face of Rule 18, which establishes this principle:  that should the severities of the prison claim a prisoner by your mouth, and religious or moral instruction claim him by the chaplain’s, your department must give way to the higher department.”

“This is very new to me, sir; but if it is the law—­”

“Why, you see it is the law, printed for your guidance.  I undo your act, Mr. Hawes; the prisoner Robinson will obey the chaplain in all things that relate to religious or moral instruction, and he will write his life as ordered, and he is not to be put to hard labor for twenty-four hours.  By this means he will recover his spirits and the time and moral improvement you have made him lose.  You hear, sir?” added he very sharply.

“I hear,” said Hawes sulkily.

“Go on with your evidence, Mr. Eden.”

“Robinson, my man, you see that machine?”

“Ugh! yes, I see it.”

“For two months I have been trying to convince Mr. Hawes that engine is illegal.  I failed; but I have been more fortunate with this gentleman who comes from the Home Office.  He has not taken as many minutes to see it is unlawful.”

“Stop a bit, Mr. Eden.  It is clearly illegal, but the torture is not proved.”

“Nor ever will be,” put in Mr. Hawes.

“So then, Robinson, no man on earth has the right to put you into that machine.”

“Hurrah!”

“It is therefore as a favor that I ask you to go into it to show its operation.”

“A favor, your reverence, to you?  I am ready in a minute.”  Robinson was jammed, throttled, and nailed in the man-press.  Mr. Lacy stood in front of him and eyed him keenly and gravely.  “They seem very fond of you, these fellows.”

“Can you give your eyes to that sight and your ears to me?” asked Mr. Eden.

“I can.”

“Then I introduce to you a new character—­Mr. Fry.  Mr. Fry is a real character, unlike those of romance and melodrama, which are apt to be either a streak of black paint or else a streak of white paint.  Mr. Fry is variegated.  He is a moral magpie; he is, if possible, as devoid of humanity as his chief; but to balance this defect, he possesses, all to himself, a quality, a very high quality, called Honesty.”