“No, sir,” answered Abner gravely, “there’s no place where human life abides that is free from the curse of sin. We live in no paradise here. One place is very much like another, as far as that goes, all the world over, I take it. But I won’t weary yu with my talk. There’s not much to tell, and it’s soon told. My grandson, Saul, got into bad company and bad hands last year. They deceived and misled the poor lad, and he, being hot and fiery by nature, was all the more ready to their hand. He took to preaching rebellion, and I don’t know what, to the folks who would listen, and so lost his place on the farm.”
“He was always too good for a mere labourer,” spoke Eustace, in a quick low tone. “He was just eating his heart out in the solitude and the lack of human interest and sympathy.”
“Well, sir, I don’t know that he mended matters much by leaving. He went to Pentreath and got some sort of work there—I’m not very clear what—and got more and more with bad companions. Then came those riots you’ve heard tell of all over the country—sometimes against the new machines, sometimes against the masters, or any rich men whom the people think worth robbing when they get the chance. Saul was mixed up in these riots. I shan’t never know, I s’pose, exactly how much he was to blame; but he’d got a bad name, and folks were after him; and at last he and the cobbler, whose house he lived at, were took up and brought before the magistrates. Saul got off with six months’ imprisonment; but the cobbler went before the judges at assizes and was hanged. They all say Saul would have been served the same if his Grace hadn’t gone down on purpose to speak up for him to their reverences: it was that that did it. But six months of prison has been enough for the boy. I doubt me he’ll ever be the same again.”
Eustace was not a little shocked by this story. He remembered Saul as he had last seen him—a fine, manly, fearless fellow, strong as a giant, and with mental and intellectual possibilities that raised him far above his fellows. He knew something of the state of country prisons; that was one of the abuses he and his friends meant to inquire into when the time came. Something had been done towards amending their condition, even in the previous century; but very much yet remained that needed to be done. How had Saul borne that life for six long weary months? It was bad enough for a town-bred man, used to confinement and foul air, but what must it have been for this son of the sea and the downs?
“Tresithny, I am grieved—I am deeply grieved,” he said. “Tell me more of the poor fellow. I always thought highly of Saul. Tell me how he has borne it. He is out again now, I trust?”
“Yes, shattered in body and soul and spirit,” answered the old man very sadly, though without bitterness. “The iron has entered into his soul, and for him there is yet no healing touch that can salve the soreness of that wound.”
“He has been ill?”
“Ay, of the jail-fever. It’s rarer now than ’twas years ago; but it got fast hold of Saul. May be the fresh winds will make a strong man of him again before long; but I’m feared he’s gotten a hurt that is worse than weakness of body.”
“Poor fellow!” said Eustace with sincere concern. “I must go and see him as soon as I can.”
There was a momentary silence, and then Abner said quietly—