Hank couldn’t stop to hear all they said, and besides he felt as if he had no right to stand and listen, so he let his eye wander on down the line. Just beyond he saw an old bent, gray-haired woman with a long black veil and spotless black gown. She was crying and talking to a young man inside the grating. He heard her ask, “How could you have done it?” and heard him answer, “Mother, I don’t know, but somehow I didn’t seem to think about it at the time.” Just beyond were a man and a woman and it was so hard for them to get close to the screen that the man held a little baby up in his arms to look over the people in front. The child looked in wonder and then held out its hands and shouted with delight, “Mamma, there’s papa. Papa, have you been here all the time? Why don’t you come back home?” Young girls, too, pressed closely up to the screen, each with that look at the youth inside that neither the wise nor the foolish have ever failed to understand. The prison bars and the laws that placed their lovers outside the pale had no power to change their feeling, only to deepen and intensify their love. While Hank stood in the corridor a number of men called from the inside: “Pardner, have you got any tobacco?” Hank hastily gave away all he had, and thought that if he should ever come back he would buy as much as he could before his visit. But his musing was soon interrupted by the guard tapping him on the shoulder and telling him he was ready. Then another turnkey opened a barred door and let him inside the wicket. Here he stood in a narrow hallway with still another big locked door in front. Soon this was swung open, and at last Hank stood inside the bars and the nettings with a great throng of coatless, hatless men all talking, laughing, chewing and smoking, and walking by twos and threes, up and down the room. Hank had always supposed that these men were different from the ones he knew and had fancied that he would be afraid to be with such a crowd, but when he got inside, somehow he did not think of them as burglars and pickpockets; they seemed just like other men, except that they were a little paler and thinner and more bent. Some of these men spoke to Hank, asking him for tobacco or for money. He saw one man whom he knew very well, one of his neighbors that he supposed was out of town; and he quickly noticed that this man tried to keep out of his sight. Hank had never thought that he was bad, and could not but wonder how he happened to be here.