“I see I must go myself--No, I won't, I'll send Fry. Ah, here is Hodges. Go and see the parson, and come back and tell me whether he is like to live or like to die. Mr. Sawyer here can't speak English about a patient; he would do it to oblige me if he could, but--him, he can't.” “Don't much like the job,” demurred Hodges sulkily. “What matters what you like? You must all do things you don't like in a prison, or get into trouble.” More accustomed to obey than to reflect, Hodges yielded, but at Mr. Eden's very door, his commander being now out of sight, his reluctance revived; and this led to an amicable discussion in which the surgeon made him observe how very ferocious and impatient of opposition the governor had lately become. “He can get either of us dismissed if we offend him.” So the pair of cowards did what they were bid--and got themselves trod upon a bit. It only remains to be said that as they trudged back together a little venom worked in their little hearts. They hated both duelists--one for treating them like dogs, the other for sending them where they had got treated like dogs; and they disliked each other for seeing them treated like dogs. One bitterness they escaped, it did not occur to them to hate themselves for being dogs. If you force a strong-willed stick out of its bent, with what fury it flies back ad statum quo or a little farther when the coercion is removed. So hard-grained Hawes, his fears of the higher powers removed, returned with a spring to his intermitted habits. There was no incarnate obstacle now to “discipline.” There was a provisional chaplain, but that chaplain was worthy Mr. Jones, who having visited the town for a month, had consented for a week or two to supply the sick man's place, and did supply it so far as a good clock can replace a man. Viewing himself now as something between an officer and a guest he was less likely to show fight than ever. Earnest Hawes pilloried, flung into black dungeons, stole beds and gas-light, crushed souls with mysterious threats, and bodies with a horrible mixture of those tortures that madden and those other tortures that exhaust. No Spanish Inquisitor was ever a greater adept at this double move than earnest Hawes. The means by which he could make any prisoner appear refractory have already been described, but in the case of one stout fellow whom he wanted to discipline he now went a step farther. He slipped into the yard and slyly clogged one of the cranks with a weight which he inserted inside the box and attached to the machinery. This contrivance would have beaten Hercules and made him seem idle to any one not in the secret. In short this little blockhead bade fair to become one of Mr. Carlyle's great men. He combined the earnest sneak with the earnest butcher.