The offenses of these creatures is seldom theft, hardly ever violence.  This idiot was sentenced to two years’ separate confinement for being the handle with which two knaves had passed base coin.  The same day the same tribunal sentenced a scoundrel who was not an idiot, and had beaten and kicked his wife to the edge of the grave—­to fourteen years’ imprisonment? no—­to four months.

Mr. Carter had observed that Fry looked at a long iron needle on the face of the crank and that when he had been lazy somehow this needle pointed out the fact to Fry.  He could not understand it, but then the world was brimful of things he could not understand one bit.  It was no use standing idle till he could comprehend rerum naturam—­bother it.  In short, Mr. Carter did what is a dangerous thing for people in his condition to do, he cogitated, and the result of this unfamiliar process was that he broke the glass of the crank face, took out the index, shied the pieces of glass carefully over the wall, secreted the needle, took about ten turns of the crank, and then left off and sat down, exulting secretly.

When they came, as usual, and went to consult the accusing needle, he chuckled and leered with foolish cunning.  But his chuckle died away into a most doleful quaver when he found himself surrounded, jacketed, strapped and collared.  He struggled furiously at first, like some wild animal in a net; and when resistance was hopeless the poor, half-witted creature lifted up his voice and uttered loud, wild-beast cries of pain and terror that rang through the vast prison.

These horrible cries brought all the warders to the spot, and Mr. Eden.  There he found Carter howling, and Hawes in front of him, cursing and threatening him with destruction if he did not hold his noise.

He might as well have suspended a dog from a branch by the hind leg and told him he mustn’t howl.

This sight drove a knife through Mr. Eden’s heart.  He stood among them white as a sheet.  He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity.  His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy the inquisitors, all but Hawes.

“Hold your noise, ye howling brute, or I’ll”—­and he clapped his hand before Carter’s mouth.

Carter seized his thumb with his teeth and bit it to the bone.  Hawes yelled with pain and strove furiously to get his hand away, but Carter held it like a tiger.  Hawes capered with agony and yelled again.  The first to come to his relief was Mr. Eden.  He was at the biped’s side in a moment, and pinched his nose.  Now, as his lungs were puffing like a blacksmith’s bellows, his mouth flew open the moment the other breathing-hole was stopped, and Hawes got his bleeding hand away.

He held it with the other and shook it, and moaned dismally, like a great girl; but suddenly looking up he saw a half grin upon the faces of his myrmidons.

For the contrast of a man telling another who was in pain not to make a row, and the next moment making an abominable row himself for no better reason, was funny.