what were these sounds that broke the silence of the living tomb an instinct told him it was no use asking a so he devoured hfe curiosity and surprise as best he might the next day about the same hour both were again excited by noises from the same quarter equally unintelligible he heard a great of water in against a wall and this was followed by a sort of that seemed to him to come from a human throat this latter however was almost drowned in an chuckle of several persons amongst whom he caught the tones of a called and of the governor himself robinson puzzled and puzzled himself but could not understand these curious sounds and he could see nothing except a quantity of water running out of one of the labor and along till it escaped by one of the two that drained the yard often and often robinson meditated on this and exerted all his ingenuity to conceive what it meant his previous jail experience afforded him no and as he was one of those who hate to be in the dark about anything this new riddle tor r him however the prison was generally so dead dumb and gloomy that upon two such cheerful events as water and creatures laughing he could not help a little out of sympathy without knowing why the next day as robinson was working in the corridor the governor came in with a gentleman whom he treated with unusual and marked respect this gentleman was the of the quarter and one of those who had favored the of the present system mr the prison was justly pleased with its exquisite he questioned the governor as to the health of the prisoners and received for answer that most of them were well but that were some exceptions this appeared to satisfy him he went into the labor yard looked at the examined the numbers printed on each in order to learn their respective and see that the prisoners were not went with the governor into three or four and asked the prisoners if they had any to it is never too late to mend the answer was no he then the governor � and drove home to his own house park there after dinner he said to a brother magistrate i the jail to day was all over it the next morning the came into robinson s cell with a more cheerful countenance than usual robinson noticed it you are put on the said o am i of course you are your sentence was hard labor was n t it i don t know why you were n t sent on a fortnight ago then took him out into the labor yard which he found with about half the of his in the corridor in � of these little quiet a monster called a a is a machine of this sort � there springs out of a post an iron handle which the workman taking it by both hands works round and round as in some country places you may have seen the villagers draw a bucket up from a well this iron handle goes at the shoulder into a small iron box at the top of the post and inside that box the resistance to the is regulated by the who states the value of the resistance outside in cast iron letters thus � etc eighteen hundred per hour said mr in his voice of routine and you are to work two hours before dinner so saying he left him and robinson with the fear of punishment before him lost not a moment in getting to work he found the go easy enough at first but the longer he was at it the it seemed to turn and after about four hundred turns he was fain to breathe and rest himself he took three minutes rest then at it again all time there was no as in egypt nor up of declining energy as in old so that if i am so fortunate as to have a reader aged ten he is wondering why the fool did not confine his to saying he had made the turns my dear it would not do though no mortal the thief at his task the eye of science was in that cell and watched every stroke and her inexorable finger marked it down in english on the face of the was a thing like a with numbers set all round and a hand which somehow or other always pointed to the exact number of turns the thief had made the was an or self and in that respect your superior and mine my little this was robinson s first acquaintance with the the had been the mode in his time so by the time he had made three thousand turns he was rather exhausted he leaned upon the iron handle and sadly regretted his garden and his but fear and dire necessity were upon him he set to his task and to work again i won t look at the again for it always tells me less than i expect i just plough on till that beggar comes i know he will come to the minute sadly and he turned the iron handle and turned and turned again and then he panted and rested a minute and then to his idle toil again he was now so fatigued that his head seemed to have come loose he could not hold it up and it went round and round and round with the handle hence it was that mr stood at the mouth of the den without the other seeing him halt said robinson looked up and there was the him with a discontented air i m done thought robinson here he is as black as thunder � the number not right no doubt what are ye at growled you are forty over 