Under Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in ----
gaol, and the local justices entirely approved the system. In the view
of Hawes and the justices severe punishment of mind and body was the
essential object of a gaol.

Now Tom Robinson had not been in gaol these four years, and though he
had heard much of the changes in gaol treatment, they had not yet come
home to him. When, therefore, instead of being greeted with the
boisterous acclamations of other spirits as bad as himself, he was
ushered into a cell white as driven snow, and his duties explained to
him, the heavy penalty he was under should a speck of dirt ever be
discovered on the walls or floor, Thomas looked blank and had a
misgiving. To his dismay he found that the silent cellular system was
even carried out in the chapel, where each prisoner had a sort of
sentry-box to himself, and that the hour's promenade for exercise
conversation was equally impossible.

The turnkeys were surly and forbidding, and the hours dragged wearily to
this active-minded prisoner. Robinson was driven to appeal to the
governor to put him on hard labour.

"We'll choose the time for that," said the governor, with a knowing
smile. "You'll be worse before you are better, my man."

On the tenth day Robinson tried to exchange a word with a prisoner in
chapel, and for this he was taken to the black-hole.

Now Robinson was a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage