of the code. But I had caught the clue, and, in the matter of several
days, occurred again the same initialment I had understood. I did not
wait on courtesy.

"Hello," I tapped

"Hello, stranger," Morrell tapped back; and, from Oppenheimer, "Welcome
to our city."

They were curious to know who I was, how long I was condemned to
solitary, and why I had been so condemned. But all this I put to the
side in order first to learn their system of changing the code initial.
After I had this clear, we talked. It was a great day, for the two
lifers had become three, although they accepted me only on probation. As
they told me long after, they feared I might be a stool placed there to
work a frame-up on them. It had been done before, to Oppenheimer, and he
had paid dearly for the confidence he reposed in Warden Atherton's tool.

To my surprise--yes, to my elation be it said--both my fellow-prisoners
knew me through my record as an incorrigible. Even into the living grave
Oppenheimer had occupied for ten years had my fame, or notoriety, rather,
penetrated.

I had much to tell them of prison happenings and of the outside world.
The conspiracy to escape of the forty lifers, the search for the alleged
dynamite, and all the treacherous frame-up of Cecil Winwood was news to
them. As they told me, news did occasionally dribble into solitary by
way of the guards, but they had had nothing for a couple of months. The
present guards on duty in solitary were a particularly bad and vindictive
set.