tpelier to Windsor.

CHAPTER X. PRISON-LIFE IN VERMONT.

ENTERING PRISON--THE SCYTHE SNATH BUSINESS--BLISTERED HANDS--I
LEARN NOTHING--THREAT TO KILL THE SHOP--KEEPER--LOCKSMITHING--OPEN
REBELLION--SIX WEEKS IN THE DUNGEON--ESCAPE OF A PRISONER--IN THE
DUNGEON AGAIN--THE MAD MAN, HALL--HE ATTEMPTS TO MURDER THE DEPUTY--I
SAVE MOREY'S LIFE--HOWLING IN THE BLACK HOLE--TAKING OFF HALL'S
IRONS--A GHASTLY SPECTACLE--A PRISON FUNERAL--I AM LET ALONE--BETTER
TREATMENT--THE FULL TERM OF MY IMPRISONMENT.

We arrived at Windsor and I was safely inside of the prison at three
o'clock in the afternoon. Warden Harlow met me with a joke, to the
effect that, had it not been for my handcuffs he should have taken the
officer who brought me, to be the prisoner, I was so much the better
dressed of the two. He then talked very seriously to me for a long time.
He was sorry, and surprised, he said, to see a man of my appearance
brought to such a place for such a crime; he could not understand how a
person of my evident intelligence should get into such a scrape.

I told him that he understood it as well as I did, at all events; that
I could not conceive why I should get into these difficulties, one
after the other; but that I believed I was a crazy man on this one
subject--matrimonial monomania; that when I had gone through with one
of these scrapes, and had suffered the severe punishment that was almost
certain to follow, the whole was like a dream to me--a nightmare and
nothing more. With regard to what was before me in this prison I
should try and behave myself, and make the best of the situation; but I
notified the Warden that I did not mean to do one bit of work if I could
help it.

He took me inside, where my fine clothes were taken away, and I. was
dressed in the usual particolored prison uniform. I was told the rules,
and was warned that if I did not observe them it would go hard with
me. Then followed twenty-four hours solitary confinement, and the next
afternoon I was taken from my cell to a shop in which scythe snaths were
made.

It had transpired during my trial at Montpelier, that when I was a young
man, I was a blacksmith by trade. This information had been transmitted
to prison and I was at once put to work making heel rings. It was some
years since I had worked at a forge and handled a hammer. Consequently,
in three or four days, my hands were terribly blistered, and as the
Warden happened to come into the shop,