to take in. These bundles the two
of us thrust into our shirts. I noticed that our fellow-prisoners,
with the exception of one or two who had watches, did not turn over
their belongings to the man in the office. They were determined to
smuggle them in somehow, trusting to luck; but they were not so wise
as my pal, for they did not wrap their things in bundles.

Our erstwhile guardians gathered up the handcuffs and chain and
departed for Niagara Falls, while we, under new guardians, were led
away into the prison. While we were in the office, our number had been
added to by other squads of newly arrived prisoners, so that we were
now a procession forty or fifty strong.

Know, ye unimprisoned, that traffic is as restricted inside a large
prison as commerce was in the Middle Ages. Once inside a penitentiary,
one cannot move about at will. Every few steps are encountered great
steel doors or gates which are always kept locked. We were bound for
the barber-shop, but we encountered delays in the unlocking of doors
for us. We were thus delayed in the first "hall" we entered. A "hall"
is not a corridor. Imagine an oblong cube, built out of bricks and
rising six stories high, each story a row of cells, say fifty cells in
a row--in short, imagine a cube of colossal honeycomb. Place this cube
on the ground and enclose it in a building with a roof overhead and
walls all around. Such a cube and encompassing building constitute a
"hall" in the Erie County Penitentiary. Also, to complete the picture,
see a narrow gallery, with steel railing, running the full length of
each tier of cells and at the ends of the oblong cube see all these
galleries, from both sides, connected by a fire-escape system of
narrow steel stairways.

We were halted in the first hall, waiting for some guard to unlock a
door. Here and there, moving about, were convicts, with close-cropped
heads and shaven faces, and garbed in prison stripes. One such convict
I noticed above us on the gallery of the third tier of cells. He was
standing on the gallery and leaning forward, his arms resting on the
railing, himself apparently oblivious of our presence. He seemed
staring into vacancy. My pal made a slight hissing noise. The convict
glanced down. Motioned signals passed between them. Then through the
air soared the handkerchief bundle of my pal. The convict caught it,
and like a flash it was out of sight in his shirt and he was staring
into vacancy. My pal had told me