a jail experience. For me surely it can hold
no such horror as for these poor fellows who are kept so many days on
starvation diet. Yes, if I do not feel physically unfit to-morrow I must
undertake the experience.

Soon after eight o'clock the Warden and Grant appear at my cell door. My
ears are becoming sharper, I think. I can tell now the moment the door
opens into the corridor below whether or not it is the Warden that is
coming. Of course he arrives about the same time every evening, but also
about this time the door is opening and closing a number of times. I
recognize also the Warden's footfalls on the stone pavement below. It
would not be very long, I imagine, before I should have a hearing as acute
as my fellow prisoners seem to have.

The Warden begins with an apology. "I'm very sorry," he says, "but I
forgot your newspaper to-night." Then he adds the usual remark, "I don't
know how I came to forget it."

"Don't worry," I say, "it doesn't make any difference. I've read it."

The Warden stares at me incredulously. "You've read it! To-night's
paper?"

"Certainly," I answer, "from beginning to end. Don't you believe it?" And
in proof of my statement I produce the paper.

The Warden gasps. "Well, how in the devil did you get that?"

"Oh, come now! Don't you understand that I'm a convict?" I say jeeringly.
"You mustn't expect me to answer such a question."

The Warden takes it all in good part. "Well, Dan," he says, turning to
Grant, "this man seems to be on to the game all right. What shall we do to
him for violating the rules and smashing our system?"

"Don't you know," I remark with a serious air, "that so long as you hold
me a prisoner I don't care a pin for your rules, and even less for your
damn'd system. What do you say to that?"

"I say you're a dangerous man, and the sooner we get you off on parole the
better," laughs the Warden. "But you will have to promise you won't make
more trouble for us after you get outside."

"Oh, you're in for trouble, all right; whether I'm inside or out." I say
it in jest, but we know there is many a true word spoken in that way. The
Warden will have many new problems to handle while he is in office; for
the old way is worn out and the new way is surely coming. Fortunately he
is a genuine progressive and the new has no terrors for him.

Taking up the serious part of our business, the Warden says he must go out
of town again to-morrow; and be gone over Sunday.

"W