"Take off your clothes and put these on," he says briefly.

I take the clothes as he hands them to me and place them upon a bench at my right, where I also sit and proceed to make the required change. If these are the clothes which have been carefully washed and cleaned for me, I should like to examine--at a safe distance--the ordinary ones. They must be filthy beyond words. And I suppose no one but a prisoner ever wonders or cares about the condition of the last man who wore them.

I take off my gray uniform, shirt and shoes, and as I stand in my underclothes the Captain feels me all over from head to toes to find out whether I have concealed about me a weapon or instrument of any kind. I presume the idea is to guard against suicide.

After I have been thoroughly searched I clothe myself in the soiled old shirt and trousers, put on the felt shoes, throw the coat over my shoulder and take my cap in my hand. I can not, for the life of me, see what use can be made of a cap in a dark cell. Before I hand over my own trousers to the Captain I take my handkerchief out of the pocket.

"You can't have that," says the Captain gruffly; and he snatches the handkerchief out of my hand.

Well, of all the unbelievable stupidity!

Suicide again, I suppose. But has it never occurred to anyone responsible for this System that a man can strangle himself more easily with his undershirt or drawers than with his handkerchief?

Ah! I recall it now--the case of that poor fellow who committed suicide down in this place several years ago. It was with his handkerchief that he strangled himself; so I have been told.

The official remedy, therefore, for suicide in the punishment cells is to take away your handkerchief.

And then--leave you your underclothes.

In none too pleasant a frame of mind toward prison officialdom, I enter my iron cage. It is the first one of the eight and is absolutely empty of everything except a papier-mache bucket. There is no seat, no bed, no mattress or bedding, no place to wash, no water to wash with, nothing--except the bucket. I presume I ought to be grateful even for that. But I wish it had a cover.

A convict trusty, who now appears within the radius of the electric light, hands me a round tin can, and the grated door is banged to and locked. I take my seat upon the floor and await developments.

Soon the trusty hands me, through an extra large slot in the door, a roll of pieces of newspaper, evidently intended for possible toilet purposes.

There soon follows a slice of bread, and then there is poked through the slot the end of a long tin funnel which holds a precise measure of water.

I hold my tin can to the end of the funnel and receive a gill--neither more nor less than exactly one gill--which is to last me through the night. I never appreciated before what a small quantity is measured by a gill. The water covers the bottom of my tin can to the depth of about an inch and a half.

And three gills of water is all the inmates of this place are allowed in twenty-four hours.

And up to the time that Warden Rattigan took office and first visited the jail, all the water a man here was allowed in twenty-four hours was one gill!

No wonder the men down here go insane! No wonder they commit suicide!

The electric light, held close to the grated door of my iron cage, has enabled me thus far to see the operations of Captain Martin and the trusty. Now they pass along to the other cells, and I can see nothing except the fragments of their moving shadows on the wall opposite. But they are stopping at the doors of the other cells, and are evidently giving out more bread and gills of water. So there must be other prisoners; I shall not be alone in the darkness, thank Heaven!

Having finished their duties, the trusty departs and the Captain follows; after extinguishing the electric light. The iron door turns on its hinges and is slammed shut; the key grates in the lock.

Standing up, with my hands and face close to the iron bars of the grated door, I can catch a glimpse of daylight at either end of the dungeon where the windows let in a small portion of the bright sunlight I left outside.

I hear the Captain's heavy footfalls retreating along the stone passage toward his office; then, muffled by the distance and the heavy iron door already closed, the outer door clangs faintly to, and is more faintly locked.

Then a moment of deepest quiet. Only the incessant whirr, whirr, whirr, of the dynamo through the opposite wall; and that seems not so much like a noise as like a throbbing of the blood at my temples. The rest is silence.

The sound of a voice breaks the stillness.

"Number One! Hello, Number One!"

As my cell is nearest the door, doubtless I am Number One.

"Hello!" I rejoin.

"Where do you come from?"

"From the basket-shop."

"Say! Is that guy, Tom Osborne, workin' there yet?"

Gathering my wits together so as not to be taken unawares, I answer slowly, "Yes, he's working yet."

Then there comes a hearty, "Well, say! He's all right, ain't he? What's he doin' now?"

I hesitate for an instant as to how to answer this, but determine that frankness is the best course.

"He's talking to you."

"What!"

"He's talking to you."

"Gee! You don't mean to say that you're the guy?"

"Well, I'm Tom Brown; it's pretty much the same thing, you know."

"Well, say, Tom! You're a corker! I can't believe it's you!"

Here a gentle voice breaks in. "Yes, I guess it is all right. I thought I recognized his voice."

"Yes, I'm the fellow you mean," is my reassuring statement. I feel that things are opening well.

"Well, Tom! I'm Number Four, and that other fellow's Number Two. But, say, what're you in for?"

"I refused to work."

"Gee! Did you? How did you do it?"

So I tell the story again, of my complaint regarding our bad working material and the condition of my hands. Regarding the latter my statements, although somewhat exaggerated, are not so very far from the truth. As I mention my hands it occurs to me that they feel very disagreeably sticky. They must continue in that condition, however, for some time, for I can't wash them until I am out of this place.

My invisible audience listens apparently with interest to my story; and Number Four sums up his impressions with another enthusiastic, "Well, Tom, you're all right!" which seems to be his highest form of encomium.

Presently I take up some questioning on my own account.

"Hello, Number Four!" I begin.

A voice from the dim and fading daylight of the vault outside answers, "Hello, Tom!"

"How many fellows are there in here?"

"Six of us, now you've come. That fellow who spoke a while ago is in Two, next to you. There's a fellow in Three, but he's got a bad cold so he can't talk very well. Then there's my partner in Five; and a big fellow in Eight, but he don't say much. Quite a nice party, you see, Tom. Glad you've come to join us. Say! how long are you goin' to be here?"

"I don't know. There was some talk of letting me out to-night if I would promise to behave myself."