eant, for how could a _bell_ go to
church?) every Sunday, and every other day during the week. Had the
chapel been of larger dimensions I should have gone daily, but it was
too small to hold all the prisoners, who were therefore divided into two
congregations, each approaching the, holy altar on alternate days. What
I saw and heard in the sacred edifice will be related in a separate
chapter.

At the end of my second month I was entitled to a school-book and a
slate and pencil. These articles were promptly brought to me by the
obliging school-master. Two copies of Colenso's Arithmetic had been
procured; one was given to me, and the other, as I afterwards learned,
to Mr. Ramsey. The fly-leaf was cut out, I noticed; the object being to
prevent us from obtaining a bit of paper to write on. This, I may
add, is the general rule in the prison library, every book being thus
mutilated. It is a silly precaution, for if a prisoner can succeed in
carrying on a correspondence with his friends outside, he is obviously
not dependent on the library for materials, and he would be the veriest
fool to excite suspicion by amputating the leaves of a book.

Knowing that I should have no better school-book during my long
imprisonment, I determined to make Colenso last as long as possible. I
steadily went through it from beginning to end. Working the addition
and subtraction sums was certainly tedious, but I wanted to keep the
interesting problems, as you reserve the daintier portions of a repast,
till the end. Curiously enough, it was the sober and serious Colenso
who gave me my one restless night in Holloway Gaol. I puzzled over one
pretty problem, and the bed-bell rang before I could solve it. Directly
my gas was turned out the method of solution flashed on my mind, and
I was so vexed at being unable to work it out immediately that it
was hours before I could fall asleep. During that time my brain made
desperate but futile efforts to reach the answer by mental arithmetic,
and when I woke in the morning I felt thoroughly fagged.

Having had no writing materials for two months the slate and pencil
looked very inviting. I composed a few pieces of verse, including a
sonnet on Giordano Bruno and some epigrams on Parson Plaford, Judge
North, Sir Hardinge Giffard, and other distasteful personages. But as
every piece written on the slate had to be rubbed out to make room for
the next, I soon sickened of composition. It was murdering one bantling