may lead to a discovery eventually. Perhaps Mrs. Smith will tell you more than she has told me. She says Mrs. Crane came to South Wennock to meet her husband, and I should think that likely. Recollect the fellow you saw hidden on the stairs!”
Sir Stephen had no need to say “Recollect the fellow.” That fellow was in Mr. Carlton’s mind, all too often for its peace.
AN IRISH CONVICT IN THE FEDERAL ARMY.
It was my invariable rule, when chaplain in the large convict prison on Spike Island, to ask every new prisoner “What are you in for? I was able to obtain this information from the “sheets” which accompanied his admission—and did obtain it, and all that was known of each prisoner’s antecedents, in this way—but I wished also to get the convict’s own version of the affair, which generally differed very materially from the view of his case taken by the judge and jury, and forwarded to the prison authorities. The question, “What are you in for?”— which I generally put in an abrupt way in the vestry-room of the prison chapel—rather stunned or dumbfoundered some of my flock. An Englishman might probably answer directly, and say, “for housebreaking,” or “picking pockets,” as the case might be; a Scotchman would probably place these offences under the head of “a breach of trust;” while an Irishman would scratch his head, turn himself round in his clothes, and say, “It was just nothing at all,” or, “It was all a mistake,” or, “I’ll tell you all about it some other time, sir.”
To a prisoner from whom I received the latter reply, I said, “You promised to tell me what you are in for.”
“Well, sir, it was just a family dispute.”
“It must have been rather a serious dispute, seeing you have got fifteen years for it”—pointing to the sentence-badge on his arm.
He threw up his head in a contemptuous way, which plainly said, “It is but little you could learn from the length of the sentence.”
“But what was the offence? You need not conceal it, for you know I can find it out in the office.”
“Manslaughter, sir.”
“Manslaughter!” I exclaimed, in unfeigned surprise, for the prisoner was a remarkably quiet, decent-looking man, who had been a small farmer in the north of Ireland.
He nodded assent to my exclamation of surprise, looking out at me from beneath a pair of shaggy eye-brows, like a fox from behind a furze-bush.
“Manslaughter! May I ask you who was the man you murdered?”
“It was a woman, sir; but it was no murder.”
“A woman!”
“Yes, sir.”
“And who was the woman?”
“My wife.”
“Your wife! Oh, I see, that is why you called it a family dispute?”
“Yes, sir. The judge who tried me, and gave me fifteen years, said my crime was an ‘uncommon one.’ Now you know, sir, it is not an uncommon crime at all.”
I agreed with him that the crime was too common, and thought, on that very account, it should be visited with a severe sentence, in order to check the cruelty and tyranny of husbands towards wives.
“That’s very queer reasoning, sir. If one man gives a long sentence because a crime is common, and another does the same because a crime is uncommon, what’s a poor man to do?”
“To avoid crime altogether, and treat his wife with kindness and affection. But you have not told me how it was you killed your wife.”
“It was all an accident, sir. I got mad drunk at the fair; and when I came home I took down the gun to shoot a servant-boy, for I am an Orangeman, and he is a Papist. Besides that, he discovered some of my lodge secrets. My wife caught hold of the gun to take it from me, and in the scuffle the gun went off and shot her in the ankle, and she died that night from the bleeding.”
This, I have reason to believe, was a pretty correct account of the affair; but as this prisoner took down the gun for the purpose of committing murder, he was sentenced to fifteen years transportation, although he did not kill the person he intended. He was under my instruction for several years, and I never knew a quieter or better conducted prisoner; but I could imagine him, when under the influence of liquor, to be a very maniac or devil. He was between forty and fifty years of age.
He had a friend and fellow-prisoner, who sat by his side in the prison chapel, a young man about two and twenty, who was almost as fearfully hot when sober as M——— was when drunk; and who, conscious of his failing, and knowing the severe penalties to which his unruly temper subjected him, kept as near the side of his cool friend, the wife-killer, as the somewhat stringent rules of the prison would permit.
I took a special interest in this young man,