not dead?"
"Dead!" cried the governor, kneeling by the Major's side upon the stones.
The sleeper was very still. He was a man of some forty years of age, with nut-brown tangled hair and beard. If not a short-sentence man he was still in the early stages of his term-for he lay on the bare boards of the plank with the rug, blanket, and sheet wrapped closely round him, so that they might take, as far as possible, the place of the coir mattress, which was not there. The bed was not a bed of comfort, yet his sleep was sound-strangely sound. If he breathed at all, it was so lightly as to be inaudible. On his face was that dazed, strained expression which we sometimes see on the faces of those who, without a moment's warning, have been suddenly visited by death.
"I don't think he's dead," the governor said. "He seems to be in some sort of trance. What's the man's name?"
"'Itchcock. He's one of the 'oppickers. He's got a month."
It was Warder Slater who gave the information. The governor took the man by the shoulder, and tried to rouse him out of sleep.
"Hitchcock! Hitchcock! Come, wake up, my man! It's all right; he's coming to-he's waking up."
He did wake up, and that so suddenly as to take the party by surprise. He sprang upright on the plank, nothing on but an attenuated prison shirt, and glared at the officials with looks of unmistakable surprise.
"Holloa! What's up! What's the meaning of this?"
Major Hardinge replied, suspicion peeping from his eyes:
"That is what we want to know, and what we intend to know-what does it mean? Why aren't you in your cell?"
The man seemed for the first time to perceive where he was.
"Strike me lucky, if I ain't outside! Somebody must have took me out when I was asleep." Then, realising in whose presence he was-"I beg your pardon, sir, but someone's took me out."
"The one who took you out took all the others too."
The Major gave a side glance at Warder Slater. That intelligent officer seemed to be suffering agonies. The prisoner glanced along the corridor. "If all the blessed lot of 'em ain't out too!"
They were not only all out, but they were all in the same curiously trance-like sleep. Each man had to be separately roused, and each woke with the same startling, sudden bound. No one seemed more surprised to find themselves where they were than the men themselves. And this was not the case in one ward only but in all the wards in the prison. No wonder the officials felt bewildered by the time they had gone the round.
"There's one thing certain," remarked Warder Slater to Warder Puffin, wiping the perspiration from his-Warder Slater's-brow, "if I let them out in one ward, I couldn't 'ardly let them out in all. Not to mention that I don't see how a man of my build's going to carry eight-and-forty men, bed, bedding, and all, out bodily, and that without disturbing one of them from sleep."
As the official party was returning through B ward, inspecting the men, who were standing at attention in their day-cells, the officer in charge advanced to the governor.
"One man missing, sir! No. 27, sir! Mankell, sir!"
The chief warder started. If possible, he turned a shade more purple even than before.
"Fetch me the key of the night-cells," he said.
It was brought. They went upstairs-the Major, the governor, the chief and second warders. Sure enough they found the missing man, standing at attention in his night-cell, waiting to be let out-the only man in the prison whom they had found in his place. The chief warder unlocked him. In silence they followed him as he went downstairs.
When the Major and Mr. Paley found themselves alone, both of them seemed a little bewildered.
"Well, Major, what do you think of it now?"
"It's a got-up thing! I'll stake my life, it's a got-up thing!"
"What do you mean-a got-up thing?"
"Some of the officers know more about it than they have chosen to say-that man Slater, for instance. But I'll have the thing sifted to the bottom before I go. I never heard of anything more audacious in the whole of my career."
The governor smiled, but he made no comment on the Major's observation. It was arranged that an inquiry should be held after chapel. During chapel a fresh subject was added to the list of those which already called for prompt inquiry.
Probably there is no more delicate and difficult position than that of a prison chaplain. If any man doubt this, let him step into a prison chaplain's shoes and see. He must have two faces, and each face must look in an exactly opposite way. The one towards authority-he is an official, an upholder of the law; the other towards the defiers of authority-he is the criminal's best friend. It requires the wisest of men to do his duty, so as to please both sides; and he must please both sides-or fail. As has already been hinted, Mr. Hewett, the Chaplain of Canterstone Jail, was not the wisest of men. He was in the uncomfortable-but not uncommon-position of being disliked by both the rival houses. He meant well, but he was not an apt interpreter of his own meaning. He blundered, sometimes on the prisoners' toes, and sometimes on the toes of the officials. Before the service began, the governor thought of giving him a hint, not-in the course of it-to touch on the events of the last two days. But previous hints of the same kind had not by any means been well received, and he refrained. Exactly what he feared would happen, happened. Both the inspector and the governor were present at the service. Possibly the chaplain supposed this to be an excellent opportunity of showing the sort of man he was-one full of zeal. At any rate, before the service was over, before pronouncing the benediction, he came down to the altar-rail, in the way they knew so well. The governor, outwardly unruffled, inwardly groaned.
"I have something to say to you."
When he said this, those who knew him knew exactly what was coming; or they thought they did, for, for once in a way, they were grievously wrong. When the chaplain had got so far he paused. It was his habit to indulge in these eloquent pauses, but it was not his habit to behave as he immediately did. While they were waiting for him to go on, almost forecasting the words he would use, a spasm seemed to go all over him, and he clutched the rail and spoke. And what he said was this-
"Bust the screws and blast 'em!"
The words were shouted rather than spoken. In the very act of utterance he clung on to the rail as though he needed its support to enable him to stand. The chapel was intensely still. The men stared at him as though unable to believe their eyes and ears. The chaplain was noted for his little eccentricities, but it was the first time they had taken such a shape as this.
"That's not what I meant to say." The words came out with a gasp. Mr. Hewett put his hand up to his brow. "That's not what I meant to say."
He gave a frightened glance around. Suddenly his gaze became fixed, and he looked intently at some object right in front of him. His eyes assumed a dull and fish-like stare. He hung on to the rail, his surpliced figure trembling as with palsy. Words fell from his lips with feverish volubility.
"What's the good of a screw, I'd like to know? Did you ever know one what was worth his salt? I never did. Look at that beast, Slater, great fat brute, what'd get a man three days' bread-and-water as soon as look at him. A little bread and water'd do him good. Look at old Murray-call a man like that chief warder. I wonder what a chief fat-head's like? As for the governor-as for the governor-as-for-the-governor-"
The chapel was in confusion.
