One by one we went into the booking-clerk's office again, where we were scaled and our weights entered in a book. Then we had an interview with the doctor, whose duty it was to examine us to see whether we were suffering from any complaint. I was pronounced quite sound. Dr. Gordon spoke pleasantly then, as he always did afterwards. "I suppose you've lived pretty well?" he said. "Not epicureanly," I answered, "but still well." "I'm afraid you won't like our hospitality," he rejoined. "I suppose not," I replied grimly. "However," he continued, "I shall put you on third-class diet at once, and order you a mattress." What the third-class diet was the reader shall learn presently. The second-class diet, which I should otherwise have had for the first month, consists of nothing but bread and sloppy meal-and-water, three times a day. Mr. Kemp had to put up with this wretched fare for a while, and he tells me he was ravenously hungry morning and night, so that it was a luxury to pick up a chance piece of bread from a dinner-tin in the corridor or from a friendly prisoner "off his feed." Bathing, clothing, and doctoring over, we were marched back to our cells, each loaded with a new mattress and a pair of clean sheets. A few minutes later I was summoned to the schoolroom with Mr. Ramsey, where we were furnished with pen and ink and a sheet of foolscap to write our "petition" to the Home Secretary. The schoolmaster officiated on this occasion. He was a tall, pleasant-looking man, something over forty, with a tendency to baldness. I believe he instructs prisoners who cannot read or write in those useful arts. But his general duty is to play factotum to the chaplain. He takes the singing class, leads the music in chapel, plays the harmonium (the chaplain always calls it the organ), acts as parson's clerk, and reads the lessons when his superior's throat is hoarse with raving. He has a clear and powerful voice, which often serves him in good stead. The congregation has a knack of getting out of time and tune when the melody is unfamiliar; this, in turn, distracts the choir, who flounder hopelessly, until the schoolmaster drags them back by putting full steam on the harmonium and singing at the top of his voice. Every Sunday afternoon, at least, he was obliged to display his vocal prowess in this manner. After every one of the commandments read out by the parson the prisoners chanted the response, "Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." Nine times they chanted thus, gathering momentum as they went along, so that they took the tenth in brave style. But, alas! the tenth was different. "Lord have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our hearts, we beseech thee," were the words, and the tune was correspondingly altered. Fortunately, just at the point of change, there was a strong _crescendo_, which gave the schoolmaster a fine opportunity of asserting himself. Dragging them back was impossible, so he drowned them, and