ry steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that
was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were wandering after the
figures engaged in cooking, to whom he was told such work was a reward;
he was trying to judge how far they could still enjoy life; but he
turned from their stolid low stamp of face with a sigh, thinking how
little their condition could tell him of that of a cultivated nature.

He was shown the chapel, unfortunately serving likewise for a
schoolroom; the centre space fitted for the officials and their
families, the rest with plain wooden benches. But it was not an hour
for schooling, and he went restlessly on to the library, to gather all
the consolation he could from seeing that the privation did not extend
to that of sound and interesting literature. He had yet to see the
court, where the prisoners were mustered at half-past five in the
morning, thence to be marched off in their various companies to work.
He stood on the terrace from which the officials marshalled them, and
he was called on to look at the wide and magnificent view of sea and
land; but all he would observe to Hector was, 'That boy's throat has
always been tender since the fever.' He was next conducted to the
great court, the quarry of the stones of the present St. Paul's, and
where the depression of the surface since work began there, was marked
by the present height of what had become a steep conical edifice,
surmounted by a sort of watch-tower. There he grew quite restive, and
hearing a proposal of taking him to the Verne Hill works half a mile
off, he declared that Hector was welcome to go; he should wait for his
boy.

Just then the guide pointed out at some distance a convict approaching
under charge of a warder; and in a few seconds more, the Doctor had
stepped back to a small room, where, by special favour, he was allowed
to be with the prisoner, instead of seeing him through a grating, but
only in the presence of a warder, who was within hearing, though not
obtrusively so. Looking, to recognize, not to examine, he drew the
young man into his fatherly embrace.

'You have hurt your hands,' was his first word, at the touch of the
bruised fingers and broken skin.

'They are getting hardened,' was the answer, in an alert tone, that
gave the Doctor courage to look up and meet an unquenched glance;
though there was the hollow look round the eyes that Tom had noticed,
the face had grown older, the expression more