Or, if you had a human heart beating within your breast, if you could remember ever kneeling to ask forgiveness of your God, you could turn away soul-sick from such unfeeling exhibitions, and refuse to insult their misery--fallen as they were--by your curious gaze. You could remember in your own experience, moments of fearful temptation, when the hot blood poured like molten lead through _your_ veins. You could place in the balance, as God does--as man does not--neglected childhood--undisciplined youth. You could remember, that at a kindly word, whispered in those felon cars, the hardest rock might melt; and you could wish that if prisons must be, they who pass under their iron portals might pass unrecognizable in after life by the world’s stony eyes--you could wish that when freedom’s air again fanned their pallid temples, no cursed scornful finger might lash to fury the hydra-headed monster Sin, in their scarred hearts. Heaven speed the day when the legislative heart, pitiful as God’s, shall temper this sword of justice with more mercy. * * * * * “Which is he?” asked an over-dressed, chubby, vulgar-looking fellow, to the keeper of Bluff Hill prison. “That tall fellow yonder,” replied the keeper, “with the straight nose, and high forehead--that’s he--see? reefing off flax yonder.” “Don’t say,” said the man, with his bloated eyes gloating over Percy. “How old is he?” “Nineteen only,” said the keeper. “Humph!” said the man, loud enough for Percy to hear--“_Pre_--co--cious; wasn’t intended for that sort of work, I fancy, by the look of his hands; they are as small and white as a woman’s. Ask him some question, can’t ye? I wish I was keeper here; I’d like to break his spirit,” said Mr. Scraggs, as Percy answered the keeper’s question without raising his eyes. “Bah! how these fuzzy bits of lint and flax fly about the room; my throat and nose are full. I should think this would kill a fellow off before long.” “It does,” said the keeper, coolly. “And what’s that horrible smell? Faugh--it makes me sick.” “That? Oh, that’s the oil used in the machinery.” “Why the fury don’t you ventilate, then?” asked Mr. Scraggs, thinking more of his _own_ lungs than the prisoners’, adding, with a laugh, as he recollected himself, “I don’t suppose the Governor of your State is particular on that p’int;” then, with another stare at Percy, he said, “they say he seduced old Ford’s daughter before he stole the money.” The words had hardly left his lips, when, with a bound like a panther, Percy instantly felled him to the earth, the blood spouting from his own mouth and nostrils with the violence of his passion. Scraggs lay for some hours insensible, though not dangerously wounded, and Percy was led off in irons, to reflect on this new misery in solitary confinement. CHAPTER VI. “I stepped in to inquire after poor Mary, this morning,” said a neighbor of Lucy Ford. “Poor dear! she’s to be pitied!”