I heard it all as if it had been the parson reading out a book about some other man. The words went into my ears and out again. I hardly heard them, only the last word, free-free—free! What a blessed word it is! I couldn’t say anything, or make a try to walk out. I sat down on my blankets on the floor, and wondered if I was going mad. The head gaoler walked over to me, and put his hand on my shoulder. He was a kind enough man, but, from being “took in” so often, he was cautious. “Come, Dick,” he says,“pull yourself together. It’s a shake for you, I daresay, but you’ll be all right in a day or so. I believe you’ll be another man when you get out, and give the lie to these fellows that say you’ll be up to your old tricks in a month. I’ll back you to go straight; if you don’t, you’re not the man I take you for.”

I got up and steadied myself. “I thank you with all my heart, Mr. --,” I said. “I’m not much of a talker, but you’ll see, you’ll see; that’s the best proof. The fools, do they think I want to come back here? I wish some of them had a year of it.”

As soon as there was a chance of my going out, I had been allowed to “grow,” as they call it in there. That is, to leave off having my face scraped every morning by the prison barber with his razor, that was sometimes sharp and more times rough enough to rasp the skin off you, particularly if it was a cold morning. My hair was let alone, too. My clothes—the suit I was taken in twelve years ago—had been washed and cleaned and folded up, and put away and numbered in a room with a lot of others. I remember I’d got ‘em new just before I started away from the Hollow. They was brought to me, and very well they looked, too. I never had a suit that lasted that long before.

That minds me of a yarn I heard at Jonathan Barnes’s one day. There was a young chap that they used to call “Liverpool Jack” about then. He was a free kind of fellow, and good-looking, and they all took to him. He went away rather sudden, and they heard nothing of him for about three years. Then he came back, and as it was the busy season old Jonathan put him on, and gave him work. It was low water for him, and he seemed glad to get a job.