As prison is a place usually associated with crime, Idris naturally received a shock, which his mother was not slow to perceive.
"Idie, you know something of history, and therefore you know that many a good man has found himself in prison before to-day."
"O yes: there was Sir Walter Raleigh, and that Earl of Surrey who was a poet: and—and—I can't think of any more at present, but I can find them in the book."
"Well, your father, like many others in history, is suffering unjustly."
"What do they say he did?"
"They say," replied his mother, once more sinking her voice to a whisper, "they say he committed murder. But he did not: he did not: he did not. I have his word that he is innocent. I will set his word against all the rest of the world."
"How long is he to remain in prison?"
"He is never to come out," replied Mrs. Breakspear; and, unable to control her emotion, she burst into a fit of sobbing.
Idris, touched by the sight of his mother's grief, began to cry also. Now for the first time he understood why his mother so often wept in secret. How could men be so cruel as to take his father away from her and to shut him up in prison for a crime he had not committed?
"Why didn't they put him under the guillotine?" he asked, when his fit of crying was over.