LITMIR.BIZ

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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.

      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 voice. “But how? can you tell me that,” he inquired of a gooseberry bush that grew near. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, peering about in every direction, he discovered an iron spike with some cord wrapped round it and, not far off, a piece of chalk. He pounced on them, and fastening the spike at the edge of the path attempted to draw a line with the chalk, using the string as a ruler. Not succeeding, he reflected a little, and the result was that he chalked several feet of the line all round until it was all white; then with the help of a stake, which he took for his other terminus, he got the chalked string into a straight line just above the edge of the grass. Next pressing it tightly down with his foot, he effected a white line on the grass. He now removed the string, took the knippers, and following his white line, trimmed the path secundum artem. “There,” said Robinson, to the gooseberry-bush, but not very loud for fear of being heard and punished, “I wonder whether that is how the gardeners do it. I think it must be.” He viewed his work with satisfaction, then went back to his digging, and as he put the finishing stroke Fry came to bring him back to his cell. It was bedtime.

      “I never worked in a garden before,” began Robinson, “so it is not so well done as it might be, but if I was to come every day for a week, I think I could master it. I did not know there was a garden in this prison. If ever I build a prison there shall be a garden in it as big as Belgrave Square.”

      “You are precious fond of the sound of your own voice, No. 19,” said Fry dryly.

      “We are not forbidden to speak to the warders, are we?”

      “Not at proper times.”

      He threw open cell-door 19, and Robinson entered.

      Before he could close the door Robinson said, “Good-night and thank you.”

      “G'night,” snarled Fry sullenly, as one shamed against his will into a civility.

      Robinson lay awake half the night, and awoke the next morning rather feverish and stiff, but not the leaden thing he was the day before.

      A feather turns a balanced scale. This man's life and reason had been engaged in a drawn battle with three mortal enemies—solitude, silence and privation of all employment. That little bit of labor and wholesome thought, whose paltry and childish details I half blush to have given you, were yet due to my story, for they took a man out of himself, checked the self-devouring process, and helped elastic nature to recover herself this bout.

      The next day Robinson was employed washing the prison. The next he got two hours in the garden again, and the next the trades'-master was sent into his cell to teach him how to make scrubbing-brushes. The man sat down and was commencing a discourse when Robinson interrupted him politely:

      “Sir, let me see you work, and watch me try to do the same, and correct me.”

      “With all my heart,” said the trades'-master.

      He remained about half an hour with his pupil, and when he went out he said to one of the turnkeys, “There is a chap in there that can pick up a handicraft as a pigeon picks up peas.”

      The next day the surgeon happened to look in. He found Robinson as busy as a bee making brushes, pulled his eye open again, felt his pulse, and wrote something down in his memorandum-book. He left directions with the turnkey that No. 19 should be kept employed, with the governor's permission.

      Robinson's hands were now full; he made brushes, and every day put some of them to the test upon the floor and walls of the building.

      It happened one day as he was doing housemaid in corridor B, that he suddenly heard unwonted sounds issue from a part of the premises into which he had not yet been introduced, the yard devoted to hard labor. First he heard a single voice shouting: that did not last long; then a dead silence; then several voices, among which his quick ear recognized Fry's and the governor's. He could see nothing; the sounds came from one of the hard-labor cells. Robinson was surprised and puzzled. What were these sounds that broke the silence of the living tomb? An instinct told him it was no use asking a turnkey, so he devoured his curiosity and surprise as best he might.

      The very next day, about the same hour, both were again excited by noises from the same quarter equally unintelligible. He heard a great noise

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