Page 659 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

beheld the men he had half won to love him meet him with
averted faces; discovered that to show interest in a prisoner
was to injure him, not to serve him. The unhappy man grew
thinner and paler under this ingenious torment. He had de-
prived himself of that love which, guilty though it might be,
was, nevertheless, the only true love he had known; and he
found that, having won this victory, he had gained the ha-
tred of all living creatures with whom he came in contact.
The authority of the Commandant was so supreme that men
lived but by the breath of his nostrils. To offend him was to
perish and the man whom the Commandant hated must be
hated also by all those who wished to exist in peace. There
was but one being who was not to be turned from his alle-
giance—the convict murderer, Rufus Dawes, who awaited
death. For many days he had remained mute, broken down
beneath his weight of sorrow or of sullenness; but North,
bereft of other love and sympathy, strove with that fighting
soul, if haply he might win it back to peace. It seemed to the
fancy of the priest—a fancy distempered, perhaps, by ex-
cess, or superhumanly exalted by mental agony—that this
convict, over whom he had wept, was given to him as a hos-
tage for his own salvation. ‘I must save him or perish,’ he
said. ‘I must save him, though I redeem him with my own
blood.’
Frere, unable to comprehend the reason of the calmness
with which the doomed felon met his taunts and torments,
thought that he was shamming piety to gain some indul-
gence of meat and drink, and redoubled his severity. He
ordered Dawes to be taken out to work just before the hour

For the Term of His Natural Life