And now Robinson quivered with curiosity as he turned his crank, but there was no means of gratifying it. It so happened, however, that some ten minutes later the governor sent Hodges and Fry to another part of the prison, and they had not been gone long before a message came to himself, on which he went hastily out, and the yard was left empty. Robinson's curiosity had reached such a pitch that notwithstanding the risk he ran--for he knew the governor would send back to the yard the very first disengaged officer he met--he could not stay quiet. As the governor closed the gate he ran with all speed to the cell, he darted in, and then the thief saw what made the three honest men laugh so. He saw it, and started back with a cry of dismay, for the sight chilled the felon to the bone. A lad about fifteen years of age was pinned against the wall in agony by a leathern belt passed round his shoulders and drawn violently round two staples in the wall. His arms were jammed against his sides by a straight waistcoat fastened with straps behind, and those straps drawn with the utmost severity. But this was not all. A high leathern collar a quarter of an inch thick squeezed his throat in its iron grasp. His hair and his clothes were drenched with water which had been thrown in bucketsful over him, and now dripped from him on the floor. His face was white, his lips livid, his eyes were nearly glazed, and his teeth chattered with cold and pain. A more unprincipled man than Robinson did not exist; but burglary and larceny do not extinguish humanity in a thinking rascal as resigning the soul to system can extinguish it in a dull dog. “Oh, what is this!” cried Robinson, “what are the villains doing to you?” He received no answer; but the boy's eyes opened wide, and he turned those glazing eyes, the only part of his body he could turn, toward the speaker. Robinson ran up to him, and began to try and loosen him. At this the boy cried out, almost screaming with terror, “Let me alone! let me alone! They'll give it me worse if you do, and they'll serve you out, too!” “But you will die, boy. Look at his poor lips!” “No, no, no! I shan't die! No such luck!” cried the boy impatiently and wildly. “Thank you for speaking kind to me. Who are you? tell me quick, and go. I am ---- Josephs, No. 15, Corridor A.” “I am Robinson, No. 19, Corridor B.” “Good-bye, Robinson, I shan't forget you. Hark, the door! Go! go! go! go! go!”