is
horribly lonesome.

Looking up from writing, I give a start at the sight of a white face and
the figure of a man just outside the grated door. Peering out through the
bars, so that I can get the light on his face, I recognize the Chaplain.
He puts two fingers through the door, the nearest possible approach to a
handshake, and I feel really grateful for a kindly touch and the sound of
a friendly voice. I am conscious of an almost insane desire to talk, to
pour forth words, as if the bars of my cell were damming back the powers
of speech.

The Chaplain is anxious to know how I am getting along, and cheers me by
saying that all the men are greatly interested and pleased. "They
understand what you are trying to do for them, and appreciate it," he
says. Then he tells of one prisoner he has just left in his cell on one of
the upper tiers, whom he found reading Schopenhauer. "He said he did not
know you, has nothing at all to ask of you, and will probably never see
you to speak to; but your action in coming here has somehow made him feel
that the pessimistic view he has had of the world must be wrong."

After some further talk, the Chaplain says "Good night," and goes away. I
sincerely hope that he is right in his belief; that the men do care; that,
besides gaining the information I came here for, my visit may be of some
interest and comfort to these poor fellows. Murphy said to me to-day,
"Say, you've got the boys all right." If he and the Chaplain are correct,
I may get from my experience much more than I expected.

I have already told how, not very long after the Chaplain leaves me and as
I sit writing, the lovely sound of a violin floats into the cell. Then
come the sounds of many other instruments, and the noise of the train at
the railway station, over the wall and across the street. I have also
described the ensuing pandemonium. After twenty minutes of these evidences
of the human life existing all around, the noise ceases as suddenly as it
began, and there comes a silence more profound than that which preceded
the musical explosion. Only an occasional cough, the sound of a stealthy
footfall, the jar of some iron door or the clank of distant bolt or bar.
Yet I am conscious of one curious sound which I am unable to place or
explain. It is like a very delicate clicking upon iron and is almost
continuous. I wonder whether it is the tapping of prisoners' messages from
cell to cell, of which I have heard. It would be