sentence, and never swerve from it: 'I gave Richard Yorke the
notes with my own hand.' That is the key which can alone unlock his
prison-door. Good-night, good-night."

CHAPTER XXVI.

MR. ROBERT BALFOUR.

An author of sensitive organization has always a difficulty in treating
the subject of prison life. If he avoids details, the critics do not
ascribe it to delicacy, but to incompetence; if, on the other hand, he
enters into them, they nudge the elbow of the public, and hint that this
particular phase of human experience is his specialty--that he "ought to
know," because he has been "through the mill" himself. This is not kind,
of course; but the expression, "a little more than kin and less than
kind," is exceedingly applicable to the critic in relation to his humble
brother, the author. We will take a middle course, then, and exhibit
only just so much of Cross Key as may be seen in a "justice's visit."

Twenty years ago, the system of treatment of prisoners before trial
incarcerated in her Majesty's jails was not so uniform as it now is. In
some they were permitted few privileges not enjoyed by the convicts
themselves; in others a considerable difference was made between the two
classes. The establishment at Cross Key leaned to the side of
indulgence. Its inmates who were awaiting their trial were allowed to
wear their own clothes; to write letters to their friends without
supervision (though not without the suspicion of it on their own part);
and to mingle together for some hours in a common room, where that
unbroken silence which pervades all our modern Bastiles, and is perhaps
their most terrible feature, was not insisted upon. In this common room
Richard Yorke was sitting on the afternoon following his incarceration.
The principal meal of the day had been just concluded, and himself and
his fellow-guests were brooding moodily over their troubles. The
platters, the block-tin knives, so rounded that the most determined
self-destroyer could never job himself with them into Hades, and the
metal mugs had been removed, and their places on the narrow deal table
were occupied by a few periodicals of a somewhat depressing character,
though "devoted to the cultivation of quiet cheerfulness," and by a
leaden inkstand much too large to be swallowed. The prisoners--upon the
ground, perhaps, of not needing the wings of liberty for any other
purpose--were expected to furnish (from them) their own pens. There were
but