"
"Thank you," said Richard, mechanically.
"If you'll take my advice, you'll set about something at once; sweepin',
or polishin', or readin' your Bible. Don't brood. But you will do as you
like for this afternoon, since you won't begin regular business till
to-morrow."
The warder looked keenly round the cell, probably to make sure that it
afforded no facilities for suicide; but the gas was not yet turned on,
and if it had been, his prisoner was unaware that by blowing it out, and
placing the jet in his mouth, more than one in a similar strait to his
own has found escape from his prison woes forever.
"I'll bring you some supper presently," he added; and with a familiar
nod, good-naturedly intended for encouragement, he slammed the iron door
behind him.
That he should have become an object of pity and patronage to a man like
this would in itself have wounded Richard to the quick had he not been
devoured by far more biting cares, and even now it galled him. His
twenty years might possibly, then, by extremity of good luck, be
curtailed by five. By diligent execution of menial drudgery; by
performing to some overlooker's satisfaction his daily toil; by careful
obedience and subservience to these Jacks in office, themselves but
servants, and yet whose malice or ill-humor might cause them to report
him for the most trifling faults, or for none at all, and thereby
destroy even _this_ hope--he might be a free man in fifteen years! He
would, even then, he was told, be still a young man.
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