Before being placed in position a man came out of a passage bearing a razor, with shaving materials and scissors of formidable size.
'Sit down,' said the tall warder, pointing to a bench, 'the gaol barber will cut your hair now and shave you, after this he will shave you twice a week and cut your hair every fortnight.' Subduing a frenzied impulse to seize the razor, cut every one's throat and his own afterwards, Lance sat down, and in a marvellously short time found his face denuded of moustache and whisker, while his head felt strangely cold and bristly. He submitted, vacantly staring and unresistingly, to being placed in the position proper for the apparatus. When the negative came out and was shown to him exultingly as a first-rate likeness he did not recognise himself.
This creature in the repulsive and bizarre habiliments, with cropped head and hairless face as of a patient in a lunatic asylum. Was this really himself? Was this Lance Trevanion? It could not be, unless he had gone mad. Perhaps he had without knowing it; men did not know when they lost their reason, so he had read, or how would they persist in saying they were sane? His head was burning, his eyes darkened, he gasped for breath, and before either warder could save him, fell prone and heavily on the stone floor.
He recovered to find himself in the cell to which he had first been taken. He was sitting upon the two blankets which represented bed and bedding for a hard-labour prisoner, and had been considerately propped up against an angle of the wall. He had been 'under observation' of a warder unconsciously since being carried there. This official was enabled to look in through a small barred aperture for that purpose, placed in the cell door. When the prisoner struggled into consciousness he departed, leaving Lance to realise his position and to compose his thoughts.
Merciful heaven! what thoughts were his! Let those say who have suddenly awakened to the consciousness of crime, not only alleged but legally proved; who as criminals, in spite of denial and protest, have been tried and sentenced. To the awakened knowledge of dishonour fixed, public, irrevocable! A mark for the pity of friends, for the scorn of strangers, for the chuckling triumph of enemies! Up to a certain stage of legal conflict imagination cheats the boding heart with hope of release, victory, sudden good fortune.
But, the verdict once delivered, the sentence pronounced, hope trails her wings and abandons the fated victim; faith permits the lamp to burn so low that a breath of unbelief suffices to extinguish it; charity flees in dismay from frenzied cries and imprecations. Then this is the opportunity of the enemy of mankind. This demon train finds easy entrance into the ruined fortress of the soul. The furies are not idle. Remorse, revenge, jealousy, cruel as the grave, all the unclean and baser spirits ravenous for his soul, forsaken of God and man, as he holds himself to be, gather around the scapegoat of society as the diablotins around the corpse of the physician in Doré's terrible engraving. A carnival of evil, weird and Dantesque, begins in the lonely cell. In that hour, unless his guardian angel has the power to shield him from the dread assault of the lower forces, a transformation, such as was but fabled in old classic days, takes place. The higher qualities, the loftier aspirations, the old beliefs in honour, valour, virtue, and justice take flight for ever, while the brute attributes stalk forth threatening and unchallenged.
Day after day Lance Trevanion performed mechanically his portion of appointed work among the prison herd. To them he spoke no word. When locked up with the rest for the long long solitary night, which commenced before dark and did not end till after sunrise, under gaol rules, he sat brooding over his woes. Stirling had called with printed permission from the visiting justice to see prisoner Trevanion, but he refused to meet him. How could he bear that any of his former friends should look upon him degraded and repulsive of aspect? No! He would never see them more—while in this hateful prison-house at least. Afterwards, if he were living and not turned into a wild beast, he would consider. Friends! How could a man have friends while suffering this degradation?
Towards the warders his demeanour was silent rather than sullen, but he could not be induced by threat or persuasion to affect the respectfulness which is, by regulation, enjoined between prisoners and officials. These last were indifferent, to do them justice, regarding Lance as 'a swell chap as had got it hot, and was a bit off his chump.' The exception to this state of feeling was Bracker, the head warder, who desired to be regarded with awe, and was irritable at the slightest failure of etiquette. His manner, devoid of the faintest trace of sympathy, was harsh and overbearing. To the higher class of prisoners he was especially distasteful, and from this knowledge, or other reason, they were the inmates towards whom he appeared to have the strongest dislike. It may easily be imagined that although the visiting magistrate, to whom is entrusted the duty of trying and punishing all descriptions of prison offences, is presumably impartial, yet it is within the power of any gaol official, if actuated by malicious feelings, to irritate a prisoner to the verge of frenzy, and afterwards to ensure his punishment under form of law. The trial takes place within the walls of the gaol. The warders give their evidence on oath. In a general way they corroborate each other's testimony. It is not difficult to foretell, even though the magistrate be acute and discriminating, how the decision will go. The punishments permitted in prison vary in severity. Confinement in a solitary cell with half rations, or even bread and water, for periods varying from three days to a fortnight, mark the initiatory stage of repression. Then comes the dark cell, an experience which awes the boldest.
After which, for insubordination coupled with unusual violence of speech or action, flogging may be inflicted, if a second magistrate be present at the hearing of the case. This was the code to which Lance Trevanion now found himself amenable. All ignorant of its pains and penalties, he bore himself with a sullen contempt alike of the tasks and routine observances by regulation imposed upon all prisoners. He obeyed, indeed, but with an air of indifference which provoked Bracker, who secretly resolved to 'break' him, as the prison slang goes. To that end he commenced a line of conduct which he had seldom known in his extended experience to fail. More than once, however, in his career, Bracker had been accused of cruelty to prisoners. At the last gaol where he had served the visiting magistrate had come to the conclusion that these repeated charges were not entirely without foundation, and so reporting, his official superior had warned him that if any offence of the kind was proved against him he would be disrated, if not dismissed. It was therefore incumbent on him to be wary and circumspect.