behind him. He was looking down into the yard inside. His
attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen thing that was being
thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a revulsion that she came to
a standstill.

What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began to tremble.
The man with the flowers came up to her and halted. From the prison
there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell, and succeeding this
a prolonged and resonant murmur which seemed to increase. Miss Eunice
looked hastily around her. There were several people who must have heard
the same sounds that reached her ears, but they were not alarmed. In
fact, one or two of them seemed to be going to the prison direct. The
courage of our philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a brick house
opposite suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an amused and
inquisitive look upon her.

This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. "Come, if you
please," she commanded the man, and she marched upon the jail.

She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the
structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of iron.
A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large keys.
When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door, and she passed
through.

She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one hundred
feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several people
strolling about here and there. Through several grated apertures the
sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze swept around the
cavernous apartment.

Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three more wings
of the building, and in these were the prisoners' corridors.

At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells, and
mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the chapel
above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and to the
left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The men were
dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the lofty gratings.
From above and below and all around her there came the metallic snapping
of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so significant was
everything of savage repression and impending violence, that Miss Eunice
was compelled to say faintly to herself "I am afraid it will take a
little time to get used to all this."

She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while