, baggy suit of striped
jeans, the prison stripes of the place, showing a soft roll-collar shirt
underneath, and wearing a large, wide-striped cap, peculiarly offensive
in its size and shape to Cowperwood. He could not help thinking how
uncanny the man's squint eyes looked under its straight outstanding
visor. The trusty had a silly, sycophantic manner of raising one hand
in salute. He was a professional "second-story man," "up" for ten years,
but by dint of good behavior he had attained to the honor of working
about this office without the degrading hood customary for prisoners to
wear over the cap. For this he was properly grateful. He now considered
his superior with nervous dog-like eyes, and looked at Cowperwood with a
certain cunning appreciation of his lot and a show of initial mistrust.

One prisoner is as good as another to the average convict; as a matter
of fact, it is their only consolation in their degradation that all who
come here are no better than they. The world may have misused them; but
they misuse their confreres in their thoughts. The "holier than thou"
attitude, intentional or otherwise, is quite the last and most deadly
offense within prison walls. This particular "trusty" could no more
understand Cowperwood than could a fly the motions of a fly-wheel; but
with the cocky superiority of the underling of the world he did not
hesitate to think that he could. A crook was a crook to him--Cowperwood
no less than the shabbiest pickpocket. His one feeling was that he would
like to demean him, to pull him down to his own level.

"You will have to take everything you have out of your pockets," Kendall
now informed Cowperwood. Ordinarily he would have said, "Search the
prisoner."

Cowperwood stepped forward and laid out a purse with twenty-five dollars
in it, a pen-knife, a lead-pencil, a small note-book, and a little
ivory elephant which Aileen had given him once, "for luck," and which
he treasured solely because she gave it to him. Kendall looked at
the latter curiously. "Now you can go on," he said to the "trusty,"
referring to the undressing and bathing process which was to follow.

"This way," said the latter, addressing Cowperwood, and preceding him
into an adjoining room, where three closets held three old-fashioned,
iron-bodied, wooden-top bath-tubs, with their attendant shelves for
rough crash towels, yellow soap, and the like, and hooks for clothes.

"Get in there," said the trusty, whose name