sheet; it was like
heaven. I could not help pushing my toes against the sheet to feel it,
it was so smooth and cool and clean. The nurse with kind eyes said to
me:

"'Do eat something,' and gave me some thin white bread and butter.
Frank, I shall never forget it. The water came into my mouth in streams;
I was so desperately hungry, and it was so delicious; I was so weak I
cried," and he put his hands before his eyes and gulped down his tears.

"I shall never forget it: the warder was so kind. I did not like to tell
him I was famished; but when he went away I picked the crumbs off the
sheet and ate them, and when I could find no more I pulled myself to the
edge of the bed, and picked up the crumbs from the floor and ate those
as well; the white bread was so good and I was so hungry."

"And now?" I asked, not able to stand more.

"Oh, now," he said, with an attempt to be cheerful, "of course it would
be all right if they did not take my books away from me. If they would
let me write. If only they would let me write as I wish, I should be
quite content, but they punish me on every pretext. Why do they do it,
Frank? Why do they want to make my life here one long misery?"

"Aren't you a little deaf still?" I asked, to ease the passion I felt of
intolerable pity.

"Yes," he replied, "on this side, where I fell in the chapel. I fell on
my ear, you know, and I must have burst the drum of it, or injured it
in some way, for all through the winter it has ached and it often bleeds
a little."

"But they could give you some cotton wool or something to put in it?" I
said.

He smiled a poor wan smile:

"If you think one dare disturb a doctor or a warder for an earache, you
don't know much about a prison; you would pay for it. Why, Frank,
however ill I was now," and he lowered his voice to a whisper and
glanced about him as if fearing to be overheard, "however ill I was I
would not think of sending for the doctor. Not think of it," he said in
an awestruck voice. "I have learned prison ways."

"I should rebel," I cried; "why do you let it break the spirit?"

"You would soon be broken, if you rebelled, here. Besides it is all
incidental to the _System_. The _System_! No one outside knows what that
means. It is an old story, I'm afraid, the story of man's cruelty to
man."

"I think I can promise you," I said, "that the _System_ will be altered
a little. You shall have books and things to write with, and you shall
not be har