casions through inadvertently breaking some
rule. But the others fared no better in this respect. It was cells for
anything.

This prison was a small masonry building, fitted with a tiny grating. It
was devoid of all appointments, not even a plank bed being provided. To
sleep one had to stretch one's self on the floor and secure as much
comfort as the cold stone would afford. Bread and water was the diet.
All exercise was denied, except possibly for the brief stretch
accompanied by the sentry to fetch the mid-day meal of soup, assuming
the offence permitted such food in the dietary, from the cook-house.
Conversation with a fellow-creature was rigidly _verboten_. It was
solitary confinement in its most brutal form.

The method of punishment was typically Prussian. If one upset the guard
by word or deed, he clapped you in the cell right-away and left you
there. Possibly he went off to his superior officer to report your
offence. But the probability was that he did not. Indeed it was quite
likely that he forgot all about you for a time, because the sentry at
the door never raised the slightest interrogation concerning a prisoner
within. More than once a prisoner was forgotten in this manner, and
accordingly was condemned to the silence, solitude, and dismal gloom of
the tiny prison until the guard chanced to recall him to mind.

During my period of incarceration at Sennelager the number of civil
prisoners brought in to swell our party was somewhat slender. They came
in small batches of ten or twelve, but were often fewer in number. They
invariably arrived about two o'clock in the morning. Then the sentry
would come thumping into the barrack, his heavy boots resounding like
horse's hoofs and his rifle clanging madly. Reaching the room he would
yell out with all the power of his lungs, thus awaking every one,
"Dolmetscher! Dolmetscher!" (Interpreter! Interpreter!) "Get up!" That
luckless individual had to bestir himself, tumble into his clothes and
hurry to the office to assist the authorities in the official
interrogation of the latest arrivals. This was one of the little worries
which were sent to try us, but we soon became inured to the rude
disturbance of our rest, in which the average sentry took a fiendish
delight.

By the time the first Sunday came round, and having nothing to do--all
labour was suspended, although no religious service was held--I decided
to wash my solitary shirt. I purchased a small cake of chea