Even a man of shrewd intelligence like Mr. Nihil could not fail to be occasionally taken in. On one or two points he was especially vulnerable. Signs of repentance, real or feigned, won from him at once an earnest sympathy which not seldom proved to be cruelly misplaced. There was also a certain simplicity about him, and want of experience, that sometimes made him the dupe of his subordinates when they tried to curry favour by exaggerating the sufferings of the prisoners. One day when he was _en route_ to the dark cells, intending to pardon a culprit therein confined, the taskmaster who accompanied him voluntarily observed, “You are quite right to release him, sir. His legs would get affected, I am afraid, if he were left there any time, like all the rest.”
“What do you mean by that?” asked the governor at once. “Explain.”
“I mean, sir, that whenever a prisoner is kept any length of time in the dark, his loins are always affected. It may be seen in their walk. Take the case of Welsh. Welsh is quite crippled from being so much in the dark.”
Mr. Nihil was naturally much struck with this observation, and gave it credence, thinking the officer’s opinion worth attention, as he was particularly shrewd and intelligent. But on consulting the medical man of the establishment, he found the statement quite without foundation. Nothing of the kind ever happened; there was nothing the matter with Welsh, and never had been. It was all pure nonsense.
Then there was the case of Stokes, a boy continually in mischief, an arrant young villain, who coolly tells the governor that it is no use sending him to the dark—the dark only makes him worse. The governor reminded him that he had often tried kind and gentle methods in vain, and asked what would make him better. Stokes replied that the only thing to cure him would be a good sound flogging—knowing full well that this it was not possible to inflict except for certain offences, all of which he studiously avoided. Three days later when liberated from the dark, to which he had been sent in default of corporal punishment, he tried a fresh tack with Mr. Nihil, who observes, “This boy sent for me, and spoke as from the very abyss of conscious depravity. He complains of the hardness and wickedness of his heart. He thinks there is something wrong about him. He cried much. I urged him to pray, but he said his heart was too full—too full of wickedness to pray. I have promised to visit him in his cell, when I shall endeavour to soften and raise the tone of his mind, and pray with him.” Of course his new attitude is all hypocritical deceit. Almost the next day he breaks out in conduct more disorderly than ever, and after smashing his window, spends his time in shouting to the prisoners below. The governor, now alive to his real character, declares “that the injury done to the discipline of the prison by the perpetual insubordination of this boy has become so serious, that I think he must be sent up to the committee as incorrigible.” Again he wavers, and again he changes his mind. “John Stokes applied to me yesterday evening, and spoke so sensibly, with such an appearance of a sincere desire for reformation, that I must beg to suspend my recommendation for his removal to the hulks. The result of such removal would probably be to consign him to the destroying influences of the worst companions.” Stokes did not remain long in this way of thinking, and continued still to be a thorn in the governor’s side for many a month to come.