station;
but as to the having or lacking fifty cents. "Four bits" a day was the
open sesame to a department where one could have bedstead and ragged
bedding and dirty mosquito-bar, a cell whose window looked down into the
front street, food in variety, and a seat at table with the officers of
the prison. But those who could not pay were conducted past all these
delights, along one of several dark galleries, the turnkeys of which
were themselves convicts, who, by a process of reasoning best understood
among the harvesters of perquisites, were assumed to be undergoing
sentence.

The vagrant stood at length before a grated iron gate while its bolts
were thrown back and it growled on its hinges. What he saw within needs
no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large,
flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with
heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred
men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags,--some gaunt and
feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some
red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed,--the sentenced,
the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than
out,--burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters,
wharf-rats, common "drunks," pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of
bread, garroters, murderers,--in common equality and fraternity. In this
resting and refreshing place for vice, this caucus for the projection of
future crime, this ghastly burlesque of justice and the protection of
society, there was a man who had been convicted of a dreadful murder a
year or two before, and sentenced to twenty-one years' labor in the
State penitentiary. He had got his sentence commuted to confinement in
this prison for twenty-one years of idleness. The captain of the prison
had made him "captain of the yard." Strength, ferocity, and a terrific
record were the qualifications for this honorary office.

The gate opened. A howl of welcome came from those within, and the new
batch, the vagrant among them, entered the yard. He passed, in his turn,
to a tank of muddy water in this yard, washed away the soil and blood of
the night, and so to the cell assigned him. He was lying face downward
on its pavement, when a man with a cudgel ordered him to rise. The
vagrant sprang to his feet and confronted the captain of the yard, a
giant in breadth and stature, with no clothing but a