h occur for the
first time, and belong to the period since a man's last birth, are not,
as a general rule, so permanent in their effects, though of course they
may sometimes be so. At any rate, I was not displeased at the view which
Ernest's father took of the situation.

CHAPTER LXIV

After Ernest had been sentenced, he was taken back to the cells to wait
for the van which should take him to Coldbath Fields, where he was to
serve his term.

He was still too stunned and dazed by the suddenness with which events
had happened during the last twenty-four hours to be able to realise his
position. A great chasm had opened between his past and future;
nevertheless he breathed, his pulse beat, he could think and speak. It
seemed to him that he ought to be prostrated by the blow that had fallen
on him, but he was not prostrated; he had suffered from many smaller
laches far more acutely. It was not until he thought of the pain his
disgrace would inflict on his father and mother that he felt how readily
he would have given up all he had, rather than have fallen into his
present plight. It would break his mother's heart. It must, he knew it
would--and it was he who had done this.

He had had a headache coming on all the forenoon, but as he thought of
his father and mother, his pulse quickened, and the pain in his head
suddenly became intense. He could hardly walk to the van, and he found
its motion insupportable. On reaching the prison he was too ill to walk
without assistance across the hall to the corridor or gallery where
prisoners are marshalled on their arrival. The prison warder, seeing at
once that he was a clergyman, did not suppose he was shamming, as he
might have done in the case of an old gaol-bird; he therefore sent for
the doctor. When this gentleman arrived, Ernest was declared to be
suffering from an incipient attack of brain fever, and was taken away to
the infirmary. Here he hovered for the next two months between life and
death, never in full possession of his reason and often delirious, but at
last, contrary to the expectation of both doctor and nurse, he began
slowly to recover.

It is said that those who have been nearly drowned, find the return to
consciousness much more painful than the loss of it had been, and so it
was with my hero. As he lay helpless and feeble, it seemed to him a
refinement of cruelty that he had not died once for all during his
delirium. He thought he should