necessary to describe. When one recalls the utter depravity which
prevails in German military centres the wisdom of the ordination is
obvious. The punishment is severe, the easiest being a spell of
confinement upon a black bread and water diet, but generally and
preferably clubbing into insensibility.

A few cells above me was a prisoner who had been incarcerated for
fifteen years. Whether the whole of this time had been spent in Wesel or
not I could not say, but when I came face to face with him for the first
time he gave me a severe shock. He was a walking skeleton. Every bone in
his body was visible, while his skin was the colour of faded parchment.
He looked more like an animated mummy than a human being. I stood beside
him one day in the corridor, and a bright ray of sunshine happened to
fall across his face which was to me in profile. I started. His face was
so thin that the cheek and jawbones were limned distinctly against the
light, producing the effect of the X-ray photograph, while the sun shone
clean through his cheeks. You could have read a paper on the off side of
his face by the light which came through.

This prisoner unnerved me. From morning to night, as he paced his cell,
he groaned dismally: not fitfully but continually. It was like the wail
of a dog suffering excruciating agony, only a thousand times more
irritating and nerve-racking. Even during the night he groaned,
apparently in his sleep. Another day, when similarly paraded beside him,
I asked if he would like a piece of black bread. He made no reply, but
turned such a wolfish look upon me that I hastily told him to dive into
my cell--No. 11. He watched the guard for a second, and while all backs
were turned he was gone and back beside me with the prize which he
clutched in his hand. I have never seen such a rapid movement. He slid
into the cell like a shadow and as stealthily and as quickly returned.