guard, with a loaded carbine, and, the Sergeant
coming across, admitted them.

Seven or eight fearfully ill-looking ruffians lay about on the floor,
handcuffed. They were most of them of the usual convict stamp, dark,
saturnine looking fellows, though one offered a strange contrast by
being an Albino, and another they could not see plainly, for he was
huddled up in a dark corner, bending down over a basin of water, and
dabbing his face. The greater part of them cursed and blasphemed
desperately, as is the manner of such men when their blood is up, and
they are reckless; while the wounded ones lay in a fierce sullen
silence, more terrible almost than the foul language of the others.

"He is not here," said Sam. "Stay, that must be him wiping his face!"

He went towards him, and saw he was right. The young man he had taken
looked wildly up like a trapped animal into his face, and the Doctor
could not suppress an exclamation when he saw the likeness to his
father.

"Is your face very bad?" said Sam quietly.

The other turned away in silence.

"I'll tie it up for you, if you like," said Sam.

"It don't want no tying up."

He turned his face to the wall, and remained obstinately silent. They
perceived that nothing more was to be got from him, and departed. But,
turning at the door, they still saw him crouched in the corner like a
wild beast, wiping his bruised face every now and then with Sam's
handkerchief, apparently thinking of nothing, hoping for nothing. Such
a pitiful sight--such an example of one who was gone beyond feeling
pity, or sorrow, or aught else, save physical pain, that the Doctor's
gorge rose, and he said, stamping on the gravel,--

"A man, who says that that is not the saddest, saddest sight he ever
saw, is a disgrace to the mother that bore him. To see a young fellow
like that with such a PHYSIQUE--and God only knows what undeveloped
qualities in him, only ripe for the gallows at five-and-twenty, is
enough to make the angels weep. He knows no evil but physical pain, and
that he considers but a temporary one. He knows no good save, perhaps,
to be faithful to his confederates. He has been brought up from his
cradle to look on every man as his enemy. He never knew what it was to
love a human being in his life. Why, what does such a man regard this
world as? As the antechamber of hell, if he ever heard of such a place.
I want to know what either of us three would have been if we had had
his traini