of the law.  Robinson was too sharp at picking up everything in his way, and had been too often in prisons and their chapels not to know that cruelty and injustice are contrary to the Gospel, and to the national religion, which is in a great measure founded thereon.  He therefore hoped and believed the chaplain of the jail would come between him and his persecutor if he could be made to understand the case.  Now it happened just after the justices had thrown cold water on Mr. Jones’s little expostulation that Robinson was pinned to the wall, jammed in the waistcoat, and throttled in the collar.  He had been thus some time, when, casting his despairing eyes around they alighted upon the comely, respectable face of Mr. Jones.  Mr. Jones was looking gravely at the victim.

Robinson devoured him with his eyes and his ears.  He heard him say in an undertone: 

“What is this for?”

“Hasn’t done his work at the crank,” was the answer.

Then Mr. Jones, after taking another look at the sufferer, gave a sigh and walked away.  Robinson’s hopes from this gentleman rose; moreover, part of his sermon next Sunday inveighed against inhumanity; and Robinson, who had no conception the sermon was several years old, looked on it as aimed at Hawes and his myrmidons and as the precursor of other and effective remonstrances.  Not long after this, to his delight, the chaplain visited him alone.  He seized this opportunity of securing the good man’s interference in his favor.  He told him in glowing words the whole story of his sufferings; and with a plain and manly eloquence appealed to him to make his chapel words good and come between the bloodhounds and their prey.

“Sir, there are twenty or thirty poor fellows besides me that will bless your four bones night and day, if you will but put out your hand and save us from being abused like dogs and nailed to the wall like kites and weasels.  We are not vermin, sir, we are men.  Many a worse man is abroad than we that are caged here like wild beasts.  Our bodies are men’s bodies, sir, and our hearts are men’s hearts.  You can’t soften their hearts, for they haven’t such a thing about them; but only just you open your mouth and speak your mind in right-down earnest, and you will shame them into treating us openly like human beings, let them hate us and scorn us at bottom as they will.  We have no friend here, sir, but you, not one; have pity on us! have pity on us!”

And the thief stretched out his hands, and fixed his ardent, glistening eyes upon the successor of the apostles.

The successor of the apostles hung his head and showed plainly that he was not unmoved.  A moment of suspense followed—­Robinson hung upon his answer.  At length Mr. Jones raised his head and said, with icy coldness: 

“Mr. Hawes is the governor of this jail.  I have no power to interfere with his acts, supported as they are by the visiting justices; and I have but one advice to give you:  Submit to the discipline and to Mr. Hawes in everything; it will be the worse for you if you don’t.”