It Is Never Too Late to Mend. Charles Reade Reade

I must wait till we are in chapel and pick up a pal by the voice, while the parson is doing his patter.”

      On reaching the chapel he found, to his dismay, that the chapel was as cellular as any other part of the prison; it was an agglomeration of one hundred sentry-boxes, open only on the side facing the clergyman, and even there only from the prisoner's third button upward. Warders stood on raised platforms and pointed out his sentry-box to each prisoner with very long slender wands; the prisoner went into it and pulled the door (it shut with a spring), and next took his badge or number from his neck and hung it up on a nail above his head in the sentry-box. Between the reading-desk and the male prisoners was a small area where the debtors sat together.

      The female prisoners were behind a thick veil of close lattice-work.

      Service concluded, the governor began to turn a wheel in his pew; this wheel exhibited to the congregation a number, the convict whose number corresponded instantly took down his badge (the sight and position of which had determined the governor in working his wheel), drew the peak of his cap over his face, and went out and waited in the lobby. When all the sentry-boxes were thus emptied, dead march of the whole party back to the main building; here the warders separated them, and sent them, dead silent, vizors down, some to clean the prison, some to their cells, some to hard labor, and some to an airing in the yard.

      Robinson was to be aired. “Hurrah!” thought sociable Tom. Alas! he found the system in the yard as well as in the chapel. The promenade was a number of passages radiating from a common center; the sides of passage were thick walls; entrance to passage an iron gate locked behind the promenader. An officer remained on the watch the whole time to see that a word did not creep out or in through one of the gates.

      “And this they call out of doors,” grunted Robinson.

      After an hour's promenade he was taken into his cell, where at twelve the trap in his door was opened and his dinner shoved in and the trap snapped to again, all in three seconds. A very good dinner, better than paupers always get—three ounces of meat—no bone, eight ounces of potatoes, and eight ounces of bread. After dinner three weary hours without an incident. At about three o'clock one of the warders opened his cell door and put his head in and swiftly withdrew it. Three more monotonous hours, and then supper—one pint of gruel, and eight ounces of bread. He ate it as slowly as he could to eke out a few minutes in the heavy day. Quarter before eight a bell to go to bed. At eight the warders came round and saw that all the prisoners were in bed. The next day the same thing, and the next ditto, with this exception, that one of the warders came into his cell and minutely examined it in dead silence. The fourth day the chaplain visited him, asked him a few questions, repeated a few sentences on the moral responsibility of every human being, and set him some texts of Scripture to learn by heart. This visit, though merely one of routine, broke the thief's dead silence and solitude, and he would have been thankful to have a visit every day from the chaplain, whose manner was formal, but not surly and forbidding like the turnkeys or warders.

      Next day the governor of the jail came suddenly into the cell and put to Robinson several questions, which he answered with great affability; then, turning on his heel, said bruskly, “Have you anything to say to me?”

      “Yes, sir, if you please.”

      “Out with it then, my man,” said the governor impatiently.

      “Sir, I was condemned to hard labor; now I wanted to ask you when my hard labor is to begin, because I have not been put upon anything yet.”

      “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.

      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