paper, a single magazine, and waiting for the sun to enter
the barred window, and watching it in the afternoon as it slipped
away. These two men tried to cheer the new comer in a rude, hearty
way; but when the country lad learned that they had been in detention
for six months already, held by the government as main witnesses
against the first mate of their brig, their words were as dust. They
only choked him.

"What did you do," Isaac asked, "to get you in such a scrape?"

"We saw the mate shoot the cook; that's all."

"If I'd known," said the pale boy, with, a look out of the window,
"how Uncle Sam keeps us so long--I wished I hadn't said nothing. But
we get a dollar a day; that's something." And with a sigh that he
meant to engulf with his philosophy, the boy turned his face away, so
that Isaac should not suspect the tears that salted the flavor of the
coarse tobacco.

The dark outlook, the blind future, the hopeless cell, the disordered
table, the lazy life that deadened all activity but that of the
imagination, the lack of vigorous air, the lounging companionship,
but, above all things, the thought of his mother and Abbie, and the
brooding over what he dared to call an outrage perpetrated, in the
name of the law, upon himself--these things made a turmoil of Isaac's
brain. There was a daily conflict between the Christian and the
criminal way of looking at his irreparable misfortune which he was
surprised to find that even the possession of his father's Bible could
not control.

There were times when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from
springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply
for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest. Then there were
hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot. At such a time he
wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper
promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect that
it started from a prison.

"DEAR MOTHER"--it ran--"I have not written to you for three
weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick. I am
now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well. I clear my
food and board and seventy-five cents a day. I have not been
paid yet. I think you had better not write to me until I can
give you a permanent address. I read my Bible every day and
love you more dearly than ever. I have tried to do my duty as
you would have me. Give my love to Abbie. I will