ts lotioned rags, when lights
were low, in the breathful silence of the hospital, he registered in his
heart a terrible oath that he would die ere he would again be made such
hideous sport for his enemies. In this frame of mind, with such shreds
of honour and worth as had formerly clung to him blown away in the
whirlwind of his passion, he bethought him of the strange man who had
deigned to clasp his hand and call him "brother". He had wept no unmanly
tears at this sudden flow of tenderness in one whom he had thought as
callous as the rest. He had been touched with wondrous sympathy at the
confession of weakness made to him, in a moment when his own weakness
had overcome him to his shame. Soothed by the brief rest that his
fortnight of hospital seclusion had afforded him, he had begun, in a
languid and speculative way, to turn his thoughts to religion. He had
read of martyrs who had borne agonies unspeakable, upheld by their
confidence in Heaven and God. In his old wild youth he had scoffed at
prayers and priests; in the hate to his kind that had grown upon him
with his later years he had despised a creed that told men to love one
another. "God is love, my brethren," said the chaplain on Sundays, and
all the week the thongs of the overseer cracked, and the cat hissed and
swung. Of what practical value was a piety that preached but did not
practise? It was admirable for the "religious instructor" to tell a
prisoner that he must not give way to evil passions, but must bear his
punishment with meekness. It was only right that he should advise him to
"put his trust in God". But as a hardened prisoner, convicted of getting
drunk in an unlicensed house of entertainment, had said, "God's terrible
far from Port Arthur."

Rufus Dawes had smiled at the spectacle of priests admonishing men, who
knew what he knew and had seen what he had seen, for the trivialities of
lying and stealing. He had believed all priests impostors or fools,
all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own
strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, he
began to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely was
not a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it something
vital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with
faith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, and
turned--as all men turn when in such case--to the Unknown. Had now there
been at han