Page 352 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

Rufus Dawes, as if disdaining to answer in words, cast
his eyes round the yard with a glance that seemed to ask
grimly if Civilized Society was progressing quite in accor-
dance with justice, when its civilization created such places
as that stone-walled, carbine-guarded prison-shed, and
filled it with such creatures as those forty human beasts,
doomed to spend the best years of their manhood cracking
pebbles in it.
‘You don’t deny that?’ asked the smug parson, ‘do you,
Dawes?’
‘It’s not my place to argue with you, sir,’ said Dawes, in a
tone of indifference, born of lengthened suffering, so nicely
balanced between contempt and respect, that the inexperi-
enced Meekin could not tell whether he had made a convert
or subjected himself to an impertinence; ‘but I’m a prisoner
for life, and don’t look at it in the same way that you do.’
This view of the question did not seem to have occurred
to Mr. Meekin, for his mild cheek flushed. Certainly, the
fact of being a prisoner for life did make some difference.
The sound of the noonday bell, however, warned him to
cease argument, and to take his consolations out of the way
of the mustering prisoners.
With a great clanking and clashing of irons, the forty
rose and stood each by his stone-heap. The third constable
came round, rapping the leg-irons of each man with easy
nonchalance, and roughly pulling up the coarse trousers
(made with buttoned flaps at the sides, like Mexican cal-
zoneros, in order to give free play to the ankle fetters), so
that he might assure himself that no tricks had been played

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