s
bucket at the officer and there was a little row. "I'm inclined to think,"
adds the Warden, "that he may be a little bit crazy, and I'm going to look
into it."

"I suppose that is the official version," I remark to the Warden. "Well, I
certainly hope you will look further into it; for, speaking frankly, I
think they are trying to slip one over on you. If my information is
correct, and I believe it is, the case is rather different from what you
have told me; and the treatment given the young fellow was inexcusably
brutal."

I put the matter rather mildly to the Warden, for I don't want him to
think that I am losing my balance and taking everything that is said to me
by all my fellow-prisoners as gospel truth. To believe everything they say
would doubtless be as stupid as to believe nothing.

The Warden and I again discuss the desirability of my working in one of
the other shops during the remaining time here; but after full
consideration we both feel that more is to be gained by staying where I
am. There is only a day and a half left.

"You still feel, then, as if you wanted to try the jail?" asks the Warden.

"Yes, more so than ever," I answer, "for I must find out why the prisoners
all speak of it with such horror. When you showed me the place last June,
I thought it a very uncomfortable hole, and it was not pleasant to think
about afterward. But there must be some such place to put men who defy all
authority; and it didn't strike me as so very terrible. These fellows all
speak of it with bated breath and a queer look in the eyes, as though it
held some ghastly recollection. What can it be?"

"I'm sure I don't know," answers the Warden.

"Well, neither do I, and I want to find out. Of course," I add, "I'm not
going to be foolish about the thing. If I find I don't feel well enough
for any reason, when Saturday comes, I shall just cut it out. But if my
physical condition continues as good as it is now, I mean to try it."

"All right," says the Warden. "I wanted to know, so that I can give orders
to have one of those jail suits washed. There is no need of your running
any unnecessary risk in the matter, and those dirty old clothes I don't
like."

This is my first knowledge of the custom of giving the prisoners who are
sent to the punishment cells clothes especially reserved for the jail; and
my thoughts travel at once to the filthy and disreputable garments I had
seen on a prisoner the Warden had once intervie