The man took no notice of his entrance.  The surgeon went up to him and shook him rather roughly.  Robinson raised his heavy eyes and looked stupidly at him.

The surgeon laid hold of him, and placing a thumb on each side of his eye, inspected that organ fully.  He then felt his pulse; this done, he went out with the warder.  Making his report to the governor, he came in turn to Robinson.

“No. 19 is sinking.”

“Oh! is he?  Fry” (turning to a warder), “what has 19’s treatment been?”

“Been in his cell, sir, without labor since he came.  Blackhole yesterday, for communicating in chapel.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“Doctor says he is sinking.”

“What the devil do you mean by his sinking?”

“Well, sir,” replied the surgeon, with a sort of dry deference, “he is dying—­that is what I mean.”

“Oh, he is dying, is he; d—­n him, we’ll stop that.  Here, Fry, take No. 19 out into the garden, and set him to work.  And put him on the corridors to-morrow.”

“Is he to be let talk to us, sir?”

“Humph! yes!”

Robinson was taken out into the garden; it was a small piece of ground that had once been a yard; it was inclosed within walls of great height, and to us would have seemed a cheerless place for horticulture, but to Robinson it appeared the garden of Eden.  He gave a sigh of relief and pleasure, but the next moment his countenance fell.

“They won’t let me stay here!”

Fry took him into the center of the garden, and put a spade into his hand.  “Now you dig this piece,” said he in his dry, unfriendly tone, “and if you have time cut the edges of this grass path square.”  The words were scarcely out of his mouth before Robinson drove the spade into the soil with all the energy of one of God’s creatures escaping from system back to nature.

Fry left him in the garden after making him pull down his vizor, for there was one more prisoner working at some distance.

Robinson set to with energy, and dug for the bare life.  It was a sort of work he knew very little about, and a gardener would have been disgusted at his ridges, but he threw his whole soul into it and very soon had nearly completed his task.  Having been confined so long without exercise his breath was short, and he perspired profusely; but he did not care for that.  “Oh, how sweet this is after being buried alive,” cried he, and in went the spade again.  Presently he was seized with a strong desire to try the other part of his task, the more so as it required more skill and presented a difficulty to overcome.  A part of the path had been shaved and the knippers lay where they had been last used.  Robinson inspected the recent work with an intelligent eye, and soon discovered traces of a white line on one side of the path, that served as a guide to the knippers.  “Oh!  I must draw a straight line,” said Robinson out loud, indulging himself with the sound of a human