gooseberry-bush, but not very loud for fear of being heard and punished, “I wonder whether that is how the gardeners do it. I think it must be.” He viewed his work with satisfaction, then went back to his digging, and as he put the finishing stroke Fry came to bring him back to his cell. It was bedtime. “I never worked in a garden before,” began Robinson, “so it is not so well done as it might be, but if I was to come every day for a week, I think I could master it. I did not know there was a garden in this prison. If ever I build a prison there shall be a garden in it as big as Belgrave Square.” “You are precious fond of the sound of your own voice, No. 19,” said Fry dryly. “We are not forbidden to speak to the warders, are we?” “Not at proper times.” He threw open cell-door 19, and Robinson entered. Before he could close the door Robinson said, “Good-night and thank you.” “G'night,” snarled Fry sullenly, as one shamed against his will into a civility. Robinson lay awake half the night, and awoke the next morning rather feverish and stiff, but not the leaden thing he was the day before. A feather turns a balanced scale. This man's life and reason had been engaged in a drawn battle with three mortal enemies--solitude, silence and privation of all employment. That little bit of labor and wholesome thought, whose paltry and childish details I half blush to have given you, were yet due to my story, for they took a man out of himself, checked the self-devouring process, and helped elastic nature to recover herself this bout. The next day Robinson was employed washing the prison. The next he got two hours in the garden again, and the next the trades'-master was sent into his cell to teach him how to make scrubbing-brushes. The man sat down and was commencing a discourse when Robinson interrupted him politely: “Sir, let me see you work, and watch me try to do the same, and correct me.” “With all my heart,” said the trades'-master. He remained about half an hour with his pupil, and when he went out he said to one of the turnkeys, “There is a chap in there that can pick up a handicraft as a pigeon picks up peas.” The next day the surgeon happened to look in. He found Robinson as busy as a bee making brushes, pulled his eye open again, felt his pulse, and wrote something down in his memorandum-book. He left directions with the turnkey that No. 19 should be kept employed, with the governor's permission. Robinson's hands were now full; he made brushes, and every day put some of them to the test upon the floor and walls of the building.