with the name of thief, written full across his
breast; another, bearing an appropriate motto,
had murdered his brother, and hidden his body
piecemeal under his house;  a third was a horse-
stealer; while a fourth was simply a youth
convicted of some petty offence, whom the Father,
in want of an assistant, and seized and marked
with the fatal ring in spite of his agony and
shame. But his virtue was soon corrupted into
harmony with the atmosphere of the place, and
he became as fiendish as the rest, before the
tears on his cheeks were well dried. When the
English prisoner was marched in, the Father
received him with his customary imprecations,
and led him to a huge block of granite in the
centre of the yard. Here, three pairs of fetters
were struck on to his ankles, coupling his feet
so closely that he could scarcely advance a foot's
space at a step. He was then told to walk to
his den, which after much trouble and shuffling
he managed to do.

A room about forty feet by thirty, and five or
six feet high, formed of planks of teak-wood,
with a few chinks left here and there as the only
ventilation considered necessary, no window, no
aperture of any kind, save a chance hole in the
roof of about a foot square, and a closely-woven
bamboo wicket used as a door, and always kept
closed—a room which had never been cleaned
out since first built, which swarmed with vermin
and reeked with foul miasma—a room where
forty or fifty hapless wretches lay nearly naked
on the floor, almost all in chains, and some with
their feet in the stocks besides, all with the
work of famine on their gaunt frames and
haggard faces, all silent, squalid, broken. This
was henceforth Mr. Gouger's home. A gigantic
row of stocks, capable of holding a dozen pairs
of feet at once, looking like a huge alligator as
it opened and shut its jaws with a loud snap
upon its prey; several smaller pairs, each
holding its couple of wretched victims; a long
bamboo suspended from the roof by a rope at
each end, and worked by blocks or pulleys, and
a large earthen cup filled with earth-oil for the
night watches, completed the furniture of the
room.

Beside these machines, there was nothing but
the thirty or forty prisoners, the countless
vermin, the ring-cheeked guards, the hot and
stifling air, the thick layers of dirt and garbage,
and the terrible fear which fell upon them all
like a presence and a power. Soon all the
Europeans in Burmah were collected in that
prison. Three Englishmen, including our old
friend Rodgers, whose long years of court
experience had not been able to save him, the
American missionaries, Dr. Judson and Dr.
Price, and afterwards Lanciego, the Spaniard,
for all that he had been made collector of
customs, and that his wife was sister of the second
queen. He was Christian and European, and
that was quite enough for the government. Mr.
Gouger's friends, servants, and agents, the Red
Rat and the Red Gold, were not long after
included among the number, and then the
party was complete. They were not allowed to speak
to each other save in the Burmese Ianguage,
and the Father placed them under the especial
care of a young savage with a club, who had
orders to brain them if they opened their lips
save in such accents as he could understand.
When night came on the worst trials began.
The Father entered to count up his children,
and arrange them safely for the night. The meaning
of the Iong bamboo, with its ropes and
pulleys, was now evident. " It was passed
between the legs of each individual, and when it
had threaded our number, seven in all, a man at
each end hoisted it up by the blocks to a height
which allowed our shoulders to rest on the
ground, while our feet depended from the iron
rings of the fetters."

The adjustment of the height was left to the
Father, who calculated to a nicety the line
between pain and danger, and left off just when
the latter began. Having determined, to an
inch, the exact point to which he might safely
go, he counted his captives by giving each a
smart rap on the head, then delivered up his
staff and his charge to the young savage, with
a significant hint of what he might expect
if one was missing when the wicket was opened
next morning. He then, with ghastly facetiousness,
wished them a good night's rest; the
young savage lighted his pipe, and did the same
by all who wished it; trimmed the lamp, and
sat down beside it; and soon the whole prison
was plunged in death-like stillness, save when it
was broken by cries and groans of pain. The
next morning the Father, finding his tally
correct, let down the bamboo, and at eight o clock
drove his wretched flock, in gangs of ten or
twelve, for five minutes' breathing-time in the
open air; then, such of the prisoners as had
friends who would not let them starve, received
their breakfasts from the hands of the Ring-
cheeked, and such as had none waited for the
chance charity of the rest, who gave them what
they could spare.

Sundry interrogations, more or less calculated
to terrify and bewilder, sundry witnessings of
torture, and threats held out of the like to be
done to himself if still contumacious and
unyielding, the destruction of all his property, aud
the confiscation of his gains, formed the next
stages in Mr. Gouger's calendar of suffering.
But, as there was nothing to tell, there was
nothing to be elicited, and the poor young
Englishman was sent almost mad by this incessant
terror and suspense. Every day at three o'clock
a silence, as of death, fell over the prisoners.
This was the hour when those of them who had
been condemned to death were taken out to be
executed. No one knew whose turn it might
be, whether his own or another's; and the
shudder which ran through that living mass
when the gong struck the fatal hour, and one of
the Ring-cheeked entered by the wicket, striding
silently to his prey, now for the first time
conscious of his fate, was perhaps the most horrible
torture of all. The authorities had not studied
human nature in vain. They understood all the
soft places, and what wounds would eat deepest