“We are kinder to you than the judges then, it seems.”

“Yes, sir! but I am not naturally lazy, and—­”

“A little hard work would amuse you just now?”

“Indeed, sir, I think it would; I am very much depressed in spirits.”

“You will be worse before you are better.”

“Heaven forbid!  I think if you don’t give me something to do I shall go out of my mind soon, sir.”

“That is what they all say!  You will be put on hard labor, I promise you, but not when it suits you.  We’ll choose the time.”  And the governor went out with a knowing smile upon his face.

The thief sat himself down disconsolately, and the heavy hours, like leaden waves, seemed to rise and rise, and roll over his head and suffocate him, and weigh him down, down, down to bottomless despair.

At length, about the tenth day, this human being’s desire to exchange a friendly word with some other human creature became so strong that in the chapel during service he scratched the door of his sentry-box, and whispered, “Mate, whisper me a word, for pity’s sake.”  He received no answer; but even to have spoken himself relieved his swelling soul for a minute or two.  Half an hour later four turnkeys came into his cell, and took him down stairs and confined him in a pitch-dark dungeon.

The prisoner whose attention he had tried to attract in chapel had told to curry favor, and was reported favorably for the same.

The darkness in which Robinson now lay was not like the darkness of our bedrooms at night, in which the outlines of objects are more or less visible; it was the frightful darkness that chilled and crushed the Egyptians soul and body; it was a darkness that might be felt.

This terrible and unnatural privation of all light is very trying to all God’s creatures, to none more so than to man, and among men it is most dangerous and distressing to those who have imagination and excitability.  Now Robinson was a man of this class, a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that vent themselves in action, but not rich in the tough fortitude which does little, feels little and bears much.

When they took him out of the black hole after six hours’ confinement he was observed to be white as a sheet, and to tremble violently all over, and in this state at the word of command he crept back all the way to his cell, his hand to his eyes, that were dazzled by what seemed to him bright daylight, his body shaking, while every now and then a loud, convulsive sob burst from his bosom.

The governor happened to be on the corridor, looking down over the rails as Robinson passed him.  He said to him, with a victorious sneer, “You won’t be refractory in chapel again in a hurry.”

“No,” said the thief, in a low, gentle voice, despairingly.

The day after Robinson was put in the black hole the surgeon came his rounds.  He found him in a corner of his cell with his eyes fixed on the floor.