urned on the
door-jamb.

Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the
darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the
glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like
apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high.
It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a
tin wash-basin stood on it.

On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which
the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor.
There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end,
and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a
heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and
linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked;
night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its
grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only
sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to
the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall
on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment
cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the
words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but
loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and
pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.

Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor,
the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full
of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one
ray of hope.

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.

They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with
loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them
were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of
contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive
reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's
especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the
choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner
was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new
home. He was loud in his responses, but