John Lexman - A. O. 43 - looked up at the blue sky as he had
looked so many times from the exercise yard, and wondered what the
day would bring forth. A day to him was the beginning and the end
of an eternity. He dare not let his mind dwell upon the long
aching years ahead. He dare not think of the woman he left, or
let his mind dwell upon the agony which she was enduring. He had
disappeared from the world, the world he loved, and the world that
knew him, and all that there was in life; all that was worth while
had been crushed and obliterated into the granite of the
Princetown quarries, and its wide horizon shrunken by the gaunt
moorland with its menacing tors.

New interests made up his existence. The quality of the food was
one. The character of the book he would receive from the prison
library another. The future meant Sunday chapel; the present
whatever task they found him. For the day he was to paint some
doors and windows of an outlying cottage. A cottage occupied by a
warder who, for some reason, on the day previous, had spoken to
him with a certain kindness and a certain respect which was
unusual.

"Face the wall," growled a voice, and mechanically he turned, his
hands still behind him, and stood staring at the grey wall of the
prison storehouse.

He heard the shuffling feet of the quarry gang, his ears caught
the clink of the chains which bound them together. They were
desperate men, peculiarly interesting to him, and he had watched
their faces furtively in the early period of his imprisonment.