However, as I am well, I work automatically, closely, and with persistence. Then comes ten o’clock, and with it the governor with his escort. He inspects each cell, and if all is not as it should be, the prisoner will hear of it. There is no friendly greeting of “Good-morning” nor parting “Good-night” within those gloomy walls. The tone is formal and the governor says: “How are you, Maybrick? Any complaints? Do you want anything?” and then he passes on. Then I am again alone with my work and my brooding thoughts. I never made complaints. One but adds to one’s burden by finding causes for complaint. With the coming and the going of the governor the monotony returns to stagnation. THE EXERCISE HOUR Presently, however, the prison bell rings again. I know what the clangor means, and mechanically lay down my work. It is the hour for exercise, and I put on my bonnet and cape. One by one the cell doors of the ward are opened. One by one we come out from our cells and fall into single file. Then, with a ward officer in charge, we march into the exercise yard. We have drawn up in line, three paces apart, and this is the form in which we tramp around the yard and take our exercise. This yard is perhaps forty feet square, and there are thirty-five of us to expand in its “freedom.” The inclosure is oppressively repulsive. Stone-flagged, hemmed within ugly walls, it gives one a hideous feeling of compression. It seems more like a bear-pit than an airing ground for human beings. But I forget that we are not here to have things made easy, comfortable, and pleasant for us. We are here to be punished, to be scourged for our crimes and misdeeds. Can you wonder that human nature sometimes revolts and dares even prison rigor? Human instincts may be suppressed, but not wholly crushed. There were at Woking two yards in which flowers and green trees were visible, but it was only in after years that I was permitted to take my exercise in these yards, and then only half an hour on Sunday. When the one hour for exercise is over, in a file as before, we tramp back to our work. Confined as we are for twenty-two hours in our narrow, gloomy cells, the exercise, dull as it is, is our only opportunity for a glimpse of the sky and for a taste of outdoor life, and affords our only relief from an otherwise almost unbearable day. THE MIDDAY MEAL