Then there was the case of Stokes, a boy continually in mischief, an arrant young villain, who coolly tells the governor that it is no use sending him to the dark—the dark only makes him worse. The governor reminded him that he had often tried kind and gentle methods in vain, and asked what would make him better. Stokes replied that the only thing to cure him would be a good sound flogging—knowing full well that this it was not possible to inflict except for certain offences, all of which he studiously avoided. Three days later when liberated from the dark, to which he had been sent in default of corporal punishment, he tried a fresh tack with Mr. Nihil, who observes, “This boy sent for me, and spoke as from the very abyss of conscious depravity. He complains of the hardness and wickedness of his heart. He thinks there is something wrong about him. He cried much. I urged him to pray, but he said his heart was too full—too full of wickedness to pray. I have promised to visit him in his cell, when I shall endeavour to soften and raise the tone of his mind, and pray with him.” Of course his new attitude is all hypocritical deceit. Almost the next day he breaks out in conduct more disorderly than ever, and after smashing his window, spends his time in shouting to the prisoners below. The governor, now alive to his real character, declares “that the injury done to the discipline of the prison by the perpetual insubordination of this boy has become so serious, that I think he must be sent up to the committee as incorrigible.” Again he wavers, and again he changes his mind. “John Stokes applied to me yesterday evening, and spoke so sensibly, with such an appearance of a sincere desire for reformation, that I must beg to suspend my recommendation for his removal to the hulks. The result of such removal would probably be to consign him to the destroying influences of the worst companions.” Stokes did not remain long in this way of thinking, and continued still to be a thorn in the governor’s side for many a month to come. But we have in this an instance of the extreme pains Mr. Nihil was at to do his duty conscientiously by all. And if he had sometimes to deal with designing hypocrites, he was not always wrong—at least, in cases like the following, the imposture, if any, was well concealed. A woman came forward of her own accord to confess that she had made a false charge against another prisoner. “What led you to make the charge?” (She had accused the other of calling her names.) “Spite.” “And what leads you now to confess?” “I was so much impressed by the sermon I heard yesterday from the strange gentleman.”