Sixth hour.  Robinson was going mad.  The blackness and solitude and silence and remorse and despair were more than his excitable nature could bear any longer.  He prayed Hawes to come and abuse him.  He prayed Fry to bring the jacket to him.  “Let me but see a man, or hear a man!” He screamed, and cursed, and prayed, and dashed himself on the ground and ran round the cell wounding his hands and his face.  Suddenly he turned deadly calm.  He saw he was going mad—­better die than so—­“I shall be a beast soon—­I will die a man”—­he tore down his collar—­he had on cotton stockings; he took one off—­he tied it in a loose knot round his naked throat—­he took a firm hold with each hand.

And now he was quiet and sorrowed calmly.  A man to die in the prime of life for want of a little light and a word from a human creature to keep him from madness.

Then as the thought returned, clinching his teeth, he gathered the ends of the stocking and prepared with one fierce pull to save his shaken reason and end his miserable days.  Now at this awful moment, While his hands griped convulsively the means of death, a quiet tap on the outside of the cell door suddenly rang through the dead stillness, and a moment after a human word forced its way into the cave of madness and death—­

“BROTHER!”

When this strange word pierced the thick door and came into the hell-cave, feeble as though wafted over water from a distance, yet distinct as a bell and bright as a sunbeam, Robinson started, and quaked with fear and doubt.  Did it come from the grave, that unearthly tone and word?

Still holding the ends of the stocking, he cried out wildly in a loud but quavering voice: 

“Who—­o—­o calls Thomas Sinclair brother?” The distant voice rang back—­

“Francis Eden!”

“Ah!—­where are you, Francis Eden?”

“Here! within a hand’s-breadth of you;” and Mr. Eden struck the door.  “Here!”

“There! are you there?” and Robinson struck the door on his side.

“Yes, here!”

“Ha! don’t go away, pray don’t go away!”

“I don’t mean to.  Take courage—­calm your fears—­a brother is close by you!”

“A brother!—­again! now I know who it must be, but there is no telling voices here.”

“What were you doing?”

“What was I doing?  Oh! don’t ask me—­I was going mad—­where are you?”

“Here!” (rap).

“And I am here close opposite; you won’t go away yet a while?”

“Not till you bid me—­compose yourself—­do you hear me?—­calm yourself, compose yourself.”

“I will try, sir!—­thank you, sir—­I will try.  What o’clock is it?”

“Half-past twelve.”

“Night or day?”

“Night.”

“Friday night, or Saturday?”

“Thursday.”

“How came you to be in the prison at this hour?”

“I was anxious about you.”

“You were what?”