minutes, I should think, and then the doctor took his departure from the
prison. Several of the officers now came in and worked a little with the
wounded man, but toward daylight he died.

It was the longest, longest night! And when the daylight came filtering
reluctantly into the dungeon at last, it was the grayest, dreariest,
saddest daylight! And yet, when an officer by and by turned off the
sickly yellow gas flame, and immediately the gray of dawn became fresh
and white, there was a lifting of my spirits that acknowledged and
believed that the night was gone, and straightway I fell to stretching my
sore limbs, and looking about me with a grateful sense of relief and a
returning interest in life. About me lay the evidences that what seemed
now a feverish dream and a nightmare was the memory of a reality instead.
For on the boards lay four frowsy, ragged, bearded vagabonds, snoring
--one turned end-for-end and resting an unclean foot, in a ruined
stocking, on the hairy breast of a neighbour; the young boy was uneasy,
and lay moaning in his sleep; other forms lay half revealed and half
concealed about the floor; in the furthest corner the gray light fell
upon a sheet, whose elevations and depressions indicated the places of
the dead man's face and feet and folded hands; and through the dividing
bars one could discern the almost nude forms of the two exiles from the
county jail twined together in a drunken embrace, and sodden with sleep.

By and by all the animals in all the cages awoke, and stretched
themselves, and exchanged a few cuffs and curses, and then began to
clamour for breakfast. Breakfast was brought in at last--bread and
beefsteak on tin plates, and black coffee in tin cups, and no grabbing
allowed. And after several dreary hours of waiting, after this, we were
all marched out into the dungeon and joined there by all manner of
vagrants and vagabonds, of all shades and colours and nationalities, from