“Which I shall.”

“Should a royal commission be appointed to sit here, I should naturally wish to consult you as to the component members of the commission; and it is my wish to pay you the compliment usual in such cases of selecting one of the three commissioners from your body.  But one question, gentlemen, before you go.  Have you complied with No. 1 of these your rules?  Have you visited every prisoner in his or her cell once a month?”

“Certainly not!”

“I am sorry to hear it.  Of course, at each visit, you have closely examined this the jailer’s book, a record of his acts and the events of the jail?”

“Portions of it are read to us; this is a form which I believe is never omitted—­is it, Mr. Hawes?”

“Never, gentlemen!”

“‘Portions!’ and ‘a form!’ what, then, are your acts of supervision?  Do you examine the turnkeys, and compare their opinions with the jailer’s?”

“We would not be guilty of such ungentlemanly behavior!” replied Mr. Williams, who had been longing for some time to give Mr. Lacy a slap.

“Do you examine the prisoners apart, so that there can be no intimidation of them?”

“We always take Mr. Hawes into the cells with us.”

“Why do you do that, pray?”

“We conceive that nothing would be gained by encouraging the refuse of mankind to make frivolous complaints against their best friend.”  Here the speaker and his mates wore a marked air of self-satisfaction.

“Well, sir! has the present examination in no degree shaken your confidence in Mr. Hawes’s discretion?”

“Not in the least.”

“Nor in your own mode of scrutinizing his acts?”

“Not in the least.”

“That is enough!  Gentlemen, I need detain you no longer from the business you have described as more important than this!”

Mr. Lacy shrugged his shoulders.  Mr. Eden smiled to him, and said quietly: 

“As they were in the days of Shakespeare so they were in the days of Fielding; as they were in the days of Fielding so they are in the days of light; and as they are now so will they remain until they are swept away from the face of the soil. (Keep your eye on Mr. Hawes, edging away there so adroitly.) It is not their fault, it is their nature; their constitution is rotten; in building them the State ignored Nature, as Hawes ignores her in his self-invented discipline.”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“That no body of men ever gave for nothing anything worth anything, nor ever will.  Now knowledge of law is worth something; zeal, independent judgment, honesty, humanity, diligence are worth something (are you watching Mr. Hawes, sir?); yet the State, greedy goose, hopes to get them out of a body of men for nothing!”

“Hum!  Why has Mr. Hawes retired?”

“You know as well as I do.”

“Oh! do I?”

“Yes, sir! the man’s terror when Fry’s journal was proposed in evidence, and his manner of edging away obliquely to the direction Fry took, were not lost on a man of your intelligence.”