ch just reaches their next neighbor. Ten days or so after I entered
Holloway I overheard the following conversation behind me:--

"Who's that bloke in front o' you?" "Dunno," was the reply. "Queer
lookin' bloke, aint he?"--"How long's he doin'?"--"A stretch," which in
prison language means twelve months, and having served that term, I know
that it _is_ a stretch. "What's he in for?"--"Dunno, but I hear he
put somethin' in a paper they didn't like."--"What, a stretch for
that!"--And I venture to assert that, although the prisoner who uttered
this ejaculation was on the wrong side of a gaol, his unsophisticated
common sense on this point was infinitely superior to the bigotry of
Giffard, Harcourt, and North, and of the jury who assisted in sending us
to gaol for "putting something in a paper they didn't like."

During my first week's residence in Holloway Gaol, owing to the bad
weather, I exercised in the corridor with the other inmates of the A
wing. There is little more room between the cell doors and the railing
overlooking the well than suffices for the passage of a single person.
The prisoners therefore walked in Indian file, and as they were
practically beyond supervision except when they came abreast of one of
the three or four officers in charge, a great deal of conversation went
on, and I wondered why the chief warder below did not hear the loud hum
of so many voices. I afterwards discovered the reason. When you stand
under the procession you can hear nothing but the trampling of dozens of
feet, which reverberates through the wing, and drowns every other sound.

At first I marched as stiff as a poker, drawing myself together, as
it were, into the smallest compass, to avoid the contamination of
the company, most of whom were poor, repulsive specimens of humanity,
survivals in our civilised age of the lower types of barbarous or savage
times. Most of them were young and had a reckless bearing, but a few
were middle-aged, and some were obviously old hands who "knew the
ropes," were reconciled to their fate, and resolved on making the best
of the situation. Tramp, tramp, tramp! My very life seemed reduced to
this monotonous shuffle. I half fancied myself in a new kind of hell,
ranked in an everlasting procession of aimless feet, mechanically
following a convict's coat in front of me, and as mechanically followed
by the wearer of a similar coat behind. But as I passed the great window
at the end of the wing the bless