After sentence Brightly became more foolish, and rambled about his little dog worse than ever. The doctor certified he was totally incapable of undergoing hard labour, and he was removed to the infirmary, where kind people visited him and gave him tracts and hoped he would see the wickedness of his ways before it was too late. At last Brightly began to comprehend that he was a vagabond of the baser sort. All the gentlemen had said so, and they would not have impressed it upon him so frequently if it was untrue. It appeared that he had led a life of vice from his earliest years. It had been wicked to walk about the moor trading in rabbit-skins, and vile to live in a cave upon Belstone Cleave; and he had never known it until then. There was so much that he didn't know. He learnt a lot about literature in his confinement. A lady read portions of the Bible to him, and Brightly found some of it interesting, although he could not understand why the Hebrew gentlemen were always fighting, and his teacher didn't seem able to explain it. Another lady tried to teach him "Jerusalem the Golden," and he responded as well as he could, but the words would not remain in his poor memory, and he always gave a quaint rendering of his own when he tried to repeat the lines. He had the same question for every one: might he have his little dog and talk to her for a bit? At last the doctor made him understand that Ju was dead, and after that Brightly changed. His soul became rusty, as it were, and he did not respond to his teachers. He accepted everything with the same patient spirit, but he showed indifference. He became like a tortoise, and when people stroked his shell he refused to put his head out. It was all owing to the same old fault--he could not understand things. He comprehended that he was a criminal, and it had been fully explained to him that criminals must be kept in confinement because they constitute a danger to other people. But he could not understand what Ju had done that she should be taken away from him and killed. Apparently she too had been a criminal, and much worse than himself; for he had only been sent to prison, while she had been executed. That was what Brightly couldn't understand; but then he was only a fool.