Leather-heart has gone from him to be a rich man's hireling.
Shallow-heart has fled to the forest, and is hunting kangaroos with all the inches of his soul.
Single-heart sits fasting from all but grief before the door, and utters heartrending, lamentable cries to earth and heaven.
CHAPTER XLII.
—— JAIL is still a grim and castellated mountain of masonry, but a human heart beats and a human brain throbs inside it now.
Enter without fear of seeing children kill themselves, and bearded men faint like women, or weep like children—horrible sights.
The prisoners no longer crouch and cower past the officers, nor the officers look at them and speak to them as if they were dogs, as they do in most of these places, and used to here.
Open this cell. A woman rises with a smile! why a smile? Because for months an open door has generally let in what is always a great boon to a separate prisoner—a human creature with a civil word. We remember when an open door meant “way for a ruffian and a fool to trample upon the solitary and sorrowful!”
What is this smiling personage doing? as I live she is watchmaking! A woman watchmaking, with neat and taper fingers, and a glass at her eye sometimes, but not always, for in vision as well as in sense of touch and patience nature has been bounteous to her. She is one of four. Eight, besides these four, were tried and found incapable of excellence in this difficult craft. They were put to other things; for permanent failures are not permitted in —— Jail. The theory is that every home can turn some sort of labor to profit.