“No, it won't,” said Fry dryly, and turned it out, leaving the cell in utter darkness.
“There, I told you so,” said Josephs pettishly, “now you have been and turned it out.”
“Yes, I have been and turned it out,” replied Fry with a brutal laugh, “and it won't be turned on again for fourteen days, so the governor says, however, and I suppose he knows,” and Fry went out chuckling.
Josephs burst out sobbing and almost screaming at this last stroke; it seemed to hurt him more than his fiercer tortures. He sobbed so wildly and so loud that Mr. Jones, passing on the opposite corridor, heard him and beckoned to Evans to open the cell.
They found the boy standing in the middle of his dungeon shaking with cold in his drenched clothes and sobbing with his whole body. It was frightful to see and hear the agony and despair of one so young in years, so old in misery.
Mr. Jones gave him words of commonplace consolation. Mr. Jones tried to persuade him that patience was the best cure.
“Be patient, and do not irritate the governor any more—the storm will pass.”
He seemed to Josephs as one that mocketh. Jones's were such little words to fling in the face of a great despair; to chatter unreasonable consolation was to mock his unutterable misery of soul and body.
Mr. Jones was one of those who sprinkle a burning mountain with a teaspoonful of milk and water, and then go away and make sure they have put it out. When he was gone with this impression, Evans took down the boy's bed and said:
“Don't ye cry now like that; it makes me ill to hear any Christian cry like that.”