“I will take you out in three,” said Mr. Eden calmly. Hawes heard and laughed aloud.
“Give me your hand on that, sir, for pity's sake,” cried Robinson. Mr. Eden gave him his hand and said, firmly, “I will take you out in two hours, please God.”
Hawes chuckled. “Parson is putting his foot in it more and more. The justices shall know this.”
This momentary contact with his good angel gave Robinson one little ray of hope for a companion in the cave of darkness, madness, and death.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE justices went through their business in the usual routine. They had Mr. Hawes's book up—examined the entries—received them with implicit confidence looked for no other source of information to compare them with. Examined one witness and did not cross-examine him.
This done, one of them proposed to concoct their report at once. Another suggested that the materials were not complete; that there was a charge against the chaplain. This should be looked into, and should it prove grave, embodied in their report.
Mr. Williams overruled this. “We can reprimand, or if need be the bench can dismiss a chaplain without troubling the Secretaries of State. Let us make our report and then look into the chaplain's conduct, who is, after all, a newcomer, and they say a little cracked; he is a man of learning.”
So they wrote their report, and in it expressed their conviction that the system on the whole worked admirably. They noticed the incident of Josephs' suicide, but attached no significance and little importance to it. Out of a hundred and eighty prisoners there would be a few succumb in one way or another under the system, but on the whole the system worked well.