“Mercy!” cried Frere. “I am not here to be merciful; I am here to keep these scoundrels in order, and by the Lord that made me, I'll do it!”
“Maurice, do not talk like that. Think how slight an accident might have made any one of us like one of these men. What is the matter, Mr. North?”
Mr. North has suddenly turned pale.
“Nothing,” returned the clergyman, gasping—“a sudden faintness!” The windows were thrown open, and the chaplain gradually recovered, as he did in Burgess's parlour, at Port Arthur, seven years ago. “I am liable to these attacks. A touch of heart disease, I think. I shall have to rest for a day or so.” “Ah, take a spell,” said Frere; “you overwork yourself.”
North, sitting, gasping and pale, smiles in a ghastly manner. “I—I will. If I do not appear for a week, Mrs. Frere, you will know the reason.”
“A week! Surely it will not last so long as that!” exclaims Sylvia.
The ambiguous “it” appears to annoy him, for he flushes painfully, replying, “Sometimes longer. It is, a—um—uncertain,” in a confused and shame-faced manner, and is luckily relieved by the entry of Jenkins.
“A message from Mr. Troke, sir.”
“Troke! What's the matter now?”
“Dawes, sir, 's been violent and assaulted Mr. Troke. Mr. Troke said you'd left orders to be told at onst of the insubordination of prisoners.”