agreement of
opinion that I am probably getting as much experience as possible where I
am now working; and so it would be better to continue in the basket-shop
for the present. The Warden makes me a promise to come again to-morrow
evening, and they take their departure. I wish they'd come back, I haven't
talked half enough.

The Warden told me that one of the convicts who works in his household
quarters locks in (to use the prison expression denoting temporary
residence) next to me--Number 14 on this tier; and that he had felt rather
hurt that I did not answer his taps. It seems that after finishing his
evening's work he gets back to his cell at ten o'clock, and that he tapped
me a greeting last night. That was just about the time I fell asleep. I
remember getting the impression in a vague way of some noises on the
gallery near by, just as I was dropping off; that must have been the night
officer letting him into his cell. To-night I shall stay awake and answer
his message.

So the company I am in is the one I have been dreading, is it? "The
toughest bunch of fellows in the prison"--Murphy and Stuhlmiller and
"Blackie," the good-natured fellow who gave away his tobacco and brings us
the material for our baskets; and the other pleasant men whose
acquaintance I have been making these last two days in the shop. It is
incredible, inconceivable. What can be the explanation of it all?

Is it possible that I am being made the victim of a clever system of
deception? This is naturally my first thought. I can well imagine that
Jack Murphy enjoys the novel sensation of having as his partner a man who
is for the moment an object of peculiar interest to this community, that
is simply human nature. No doubt Harley Stuhlmiller enjoys giving
directions to the member of a state commission, that again is human
nature. But that these men could assume virtues which they have not, and
carry out a wholesale system of deceit--that is not possible. I have been
on my guard every moment I have been here, and I have observed some few
attempts to get into my good graces, with a possible expectation of
future benefits; but on the other hand there has been a remarkable and
most successful effort to carry out my request--to treat me as plain Tom
Brown.

No, that explanation doesn't explain; the truth must lie in another
direction. And here is my idea. I am not seeing the worse side of these
men because there is no occasion for them to show me th