Great Britain -- Social conditions -- 19th century -- Fiction
This answer disappointed the chaplain sadly; for Mr. Jones had left the
town, and was not expected to return for some days. The hostile spirit
of the governor was evident in this reply. The chaplain felt he was
at war, and his was an energetic but peace-loving nature. He paced the
corridor, looking both thoughtful and sad. The rough Evans eyed him
with interest, and he also fell into meditation and scratched his head,
invariable concomitant of thought with Evans.
It was toward evening, and his reverence still paced the corridor,
downhearted at opposition and wickedness, but not without hope, and full
of lovely and charitable wishes for all his flock, when the melancholy
Fry suddenly came out of a prisoner's cell radiant with joy.
“What is amiss?” asked the chaplain.
“This is the matter,” said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a
five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of
each suit. “A prisoner has been making these out of his tracts!”
“How could he do that?”
“Look here, sir. He has kept a little of his gruel till it turned
to paste, and then he has pasted three or four leaves of the tracts
together and dried them, and then cut them into cards.”
“But the colors--how could he get them?”
“That is what beats me altogether; but some of these prisoners know more
than the bench of bishops.”
“More evil, I conclude you mean?”
“More of all sorts, sir. However, I am taking them to the governor, and
he will fathom it, if any one can.”
“Leave one red card and one black with me.”
While Fry was gong the chaplain examined the cards with curiosity and
that admiration of inventive resource which a superior mind cannot help
feeling. There they were, a fine red deuce of hearts and a fine black
four of spades--cards made without pasteboard and painted without paint.
But how? that was the question. The chaplain entered upon this question
with his usual zeal; but happening to reverse one of the cards, it was
his fate to see on the back of it:
“THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH.”
A Tract.
He reddened at the sight. Here was an affront! “The sulky brute could
amuse himself cutting up my tracts!”
Presently the governor came up with his satellites.
“Take No. 19 out of his cell for punishment.”
At this word the chaplain's short-lived anger began to cool. They
brought Robinson out.
“So you have been at it again,” cried the governor in threatening terms.
“Now you will tell me where you got the paint to make these beauties
with?”
No answer.
“Do you hear, ye sulky brute?”
No answer, but a glittering eye bent on Hawes.
“Put him in the jacket,” cried Hawes with an oath.
Hodges and Fry laid each a hand upon the man's shoulder and walked him
off.
“Stop!” cried Hawes suddenly; “his reverence is here, and he is not
partial to the jacket.”
The chaplain was innocent enough to make a graceful grateful bow to
Hawes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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