Page 165 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

it gained for him no credit with the authorities, procured
for him the detestation and ill-will of the monsters among
whom he found himself. On his arrival at Hell’s Gates he
was a marked man—a Pariah among those beings who
were Pariahs to all the world beside. Thrice his life was at-
tempted; but he was not then quite tired of living, and he
defended it. This defence was construed by an overseer into
a brawl, and the irons from which he had been relieved were
replaced. His strength—brute attribute that alone could
avail him—made him respected after this, and he was left
at peace. At first this treatment was congenial to his tem-
perament; but by and by it became annoying, then painful,
then almost unendurable. Tugging at his oar, digging up to
his waist in slime, or bending beneath his burden of pine
wood, he looked greedily for some excuse to be addressed.
He would take double weight when forming part of the hu-
man caterpillar along whose back lay a pine tree, for a word
of fellowship. He would work double tides to gain a kindly
sentence from a comrade. In his utter desolation he ago-
nized for the friendship of robbers and murderers. Then the
reaction came, and he hated the very sound of their voices.
He never spoke, and refused to answer when spoken to. He
would even take his scanty supper alone, did his chain so
permit him. He gained the reputation of a sullen, danger-
ous, half-crazy ruffian. Captain Barton, the superintendent,
took pity on him, and made him his gardener. He accepted
the pity for a week or so, and then Barton, coming down
one morning, found the few shrubs pulled up by the roots,
the flower-beds trampled into barrenness, and his gardener

1 For the Term of His Natural Life