p up when
the bell rings, or we shall quarrel. Fold up your hammock, and clean
your room."

Even the school-boy does not begin on his first morning to reckon on his
chimney almanac, "One day gone; twenty-four hours nearer to the
holidays;" and how should Richard make that cheerful note, who had
twenty years of prison life before him, save one day!

He did as he was ordered, wearily, with a heart that had no hope: it
seemed to the warder that his air was sullen.

"If this happens again, young fellow, I report you; and then good-by to
your _V G_'s."

He did not mean to be brutal; but Richard could have stabbed him where
he stood. There were times to come when the temptation to commit such an
act was to be very strong within him; and when no thought of punishment,
far less of right, restrained him, but that of his projected vengeance
always did. Every rough word, every insult, every wrong, was treasured
up in his mind, and added to the long account against those who had
doomed him to such a fate. It should be paid in full one day; and in the
mean time the debt was out at compound interest.

He took his sordid meals, his cocoa, his bread, his gruel, not because
he had ever any appetite for them, but because without them he should
lose his strength. He must husband that for the long-expected hour when
he might need it; when the moment had arrived to strike the blow for
which his hand was clenched ten times a day. His hate grew every hour,
and, like a petrifying spring, fell drop by drop about his heart, and
made it stone. In the mean time, a fiend in torment could alone imagine
what he suffered. He spoke to no one but his warders and the chaplain;
for now he was a convict, there was no communication with his fellows;
only once a day for an hour and a half he took his monotonous exercise
in the high-walled prison-yard. Tramp, tramp, tramp, each half a dozen
paces behind the other, with an officer on the watch to see that the
limit was preserved.

"Keep your distance, you there, unless you want to be reported."

Richard did not want that; but at times his temper was like a devil
unchained, and it got the better of him, and even of his treasured
purpose; he sometimes returned a sharp answer. This weakness was almost
the only feeling within him that reminded him that he was human. He was
put on bread and water within the first fortnight; then cursed his folly
for thus postponing the one object of his life, and amended. H