the left wrist of a
negro he snapped the other handcuff of that pair. He was a very tall
negro, well past six feet--so tall was he that when we stood side by
side his hand lifted mine up a trifle in the manacles. Also, he was
the happiest and the raggedest negro I have ever seen.

We were all handcuffed similarly, in pairs. This accomplished, a
bright nickel-steel chain was brought forth, run down through the
links of all the handcuffs, and locked at front and rear of the
double-line. We were now a chain-gang. The command to march was given,
and out we went upon the street, guarded by two officers. The tall
negro and I had the place of honor. We led the procession.

After the tomb-like gloom of the jail, the outside sunshine was
dazzling. I had never known it to be so sweet as now, a prisoner with
clanking chains, I knew that I was soon to see the last of it for
thirty days. Down through the streets of Niagara Falls we marched to
the railroad station, stared at by curious passers-by, and especially
by a group of tourists on the veranda of a hotel that we marched past.

There was plenty of slack in the chain, and with much rattling and
clanking we sat down, two and two, in the seats of the smoking-car.
Afire with indignation as I was at the outrage that had been
perpetrated on me and my forefathers, I was nevertheless too
prosaically practical to lose my head over it. This was all new to me.
Thirty days of mystery were before me, and I looked about me to find
somebody who knew the ropes. For I had already learned that I was not
bound for a petty jail with a hundred or so prisoners in it, but for a
full-grown penitentiary with a couple of thousand prisoners in it,
doing anywhere from ten days to ten years.

In the seat behind me, attached to the chain by his wrist, was a
squat, heavily-built, powerfully-muscled man. He was somewhere between
thirty-five and forty years of age. I sized him up. In the corners of
his eyes I saw humor and laughter and kindliness. As for the rest of
him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all the passion
and turgid violence of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him
possible for me, were those corners of his eyes--the humor and
laughter and kindliness of the beast when unaroused.

He was my "meat." I "cottoned" to him. While my cuff-mate, the tall
negro, mourned with chucklings and laughter over some laundry he was
sure to lose through his arrest, and while the train rol