om us. They were careful
to see that we should not be tempted to commit suicide.

When I saw my cap go, I wondered if my maps, which I had sewed in the
pasteboard, would escape this man's hawk eyes. I thought I had lost
my other maps, and wondered how we should ever replace them. But it
would be time enough to think of that--when we got out.

The guard's manner was typical of the management at Oldenburg. It had
no element of humanity in it. It was a triumph of _Kultur_. The men
might as well have been dummies, set by a clock and run by
electricity.

There was a blackboard on the wall which told how many prisoners were
in the institution and what they were getting. The strongest and
worst punishment given is called "Streng Arrest," and the number who
were getting it was three. The guard, while we were there, rubbed out
the 3 and put in a 5.

Ted and I looked at each other.

"That's us," he said.

Our two little parcels were deposited in a locker downstairs, where
other parcels of a like nature were bestowed, and we were conducted
up a broad stair and along a passage, and saw before us a long hall,
lined with doors sheeted with steel.

The guard walked ahead; Ted and I followed. At last he unlocked a
door, and we knew one of us had reached his abiding-place.

"I always did like a stateroom in the middle of the boat," Ted said,
as the guard motioned to him to go in. That was the last word I heard
for some time, for the guard said not a word to me. He came into the
cell with me, and shut the iron door over the window, excluding every
particle of light.

I just had time to see that the cell was a good-sized one--as cells
go. In one corner there was a steam coil, but it was stone cold, and
remained so all the time I was there. There was a shelf, on which
stood a brown earthen pitcher for drinking-water--but nothing else.
Our footsteps rang hollow on the cement floor, which had a damp
feeling, like a cellar, although it was above the ground floor.

Without a word the guard went out, and the key turned in the lock
with a click which had a sound of finality about it that left no room
for argument.

Well, it has come, I thought to myself--the real hard German
punishment... they had me at last. The other time we had outwitted
them and gained many privileges of which they knew nothing, and
Malvoisin had cheered me through the dark hours.

Here there was no Malvoisin, no reading-crack, no friends, nothing to
save us