“Why not, sir? We have sent a pretty many to the lunatic asylum since I was a warder here.”
“Ah!”
“And some have broke prison a shorter way than that,” said the man very gloomily.
The chaplain groaned—and looked at the speaker with an expression of terror. Evans noticed it and said gravely:
“You should not have come to such place as this, sir; you are not fit for it.”
“Why am I not fit for it?”
“Too good for it, sir.”
“You talk foolishly, Mr. Evans. In the first place, 'too good' is a ludicrous combination of language, in the next the worse a place is the more need of somebody being good in it to make it better. But I suppose you are one of those who think that evil is naturally stronger than good. Delusion springs from this, that the wicked are in earnest and the good are lukewarm. Good is stronger than evil. A single really good man in an ill place is like a little yeast in a gallon of dough; it can leaven the mass. If St. Paul or even George Whitfield had been in Lot's place all those years there would have been more than fifty good men in Sodom; but this is out of place. I want you to give me the benefit of your experience, Evans. When I went to Robinson and spoke kindly to him he trembled all over. What on earth does that mean?”
“Trembled, did he, and never spoke?”
“Yes!—Well?”