UCH are the rewards which sin gives to its votaries; full of soft words and tempting promises in the beginning, they find, in the end, that "it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Thoughts like these passed through Rodney's mind, as the jailer led him to a room in which were confined three other lads, all older than himself. At that time, the system of solitary confinement had not been adopted in Pennsylvania, and prisoners were allowed to associate together; but it was deemed best to keep the boys from associating with older and more hardened culprits, whose conversation might still more corrupt them, and they were therefore confined together, apart from the mass of the criminals.
At first Rodney suffered the most intense anguish. A sense of shame and degradation overwhelmed him. He staggered to a corner of the room, threw himself on the floor, and, for a long time, sobbed and wept as though his very heart would break. For a while the boys seemed to respect his grief, and left him in silence. At last one of them went to him, and said,
"Come, there's no use in this; we are all here together, and we may as well make the best of it!"
Rodney sat up, and looked at them, as they gathered around him.
They were ragged in dress, and pale from their confinement, and Rodney involuntarily shrank from the idea of associating with them, regarding them as criminals in jail. But he soon remembered his own position,—that he was now one of them,—and he thought he would take their advice, and "make the best of it."
"Well, what did they squeeze you into this jug for, my covey?" asked the eldest boy.
Rodney told them his story, and protested that he was innocent of any crime.
The boy put his thumb to the end of his nose, and twirled his fingers, saying, "You can't gammon us, my buck; come, out with it, for we never peach on one another."
Rodney was very angry at this mode of treating his story. But, in spite of himself, he gradually became familiar with the companions thus forced upon him, and, in a day or two, began to engage with them in their various sports, to while away the weary hours. Sometimes they sat and told stories, to amuse one another; and thus Rodney heard tales of wickedness and depredation and cunning, that almost led him to doubt whether there was any honesty among men. They talked of celebrated thieves and robbers, burglars and pirates, as if they were the models by which they meant to mould their own lives; and, instead of detesting their crimes, Rodney began to admire the skill and success with which they were perpetrated. The excitement and freedom, and wild, frenzied enjoyment of such a life, as depicted by the young knaves, began to fascinate and charm his mind. Something seemed to whisper in his ear, "As you are now disgraced, without any fault of your own, why not carry it out, and make the most of it? They have put you into jail, this time, for nothing; if they ever do it again, let them have some reason for it." Who knows what might have been the result of such temptations and influences, had these associations been long continued, and not counteracted by the interposition of God?