By this time Samuel had come to realize the futility of protest. He accepted his fate with dumb despair. He gave the information the sergeant asked for--Samuel Prescott, aged seventeen, native born, from Euba Corners, occupation farmer, never arrested before. “All right,” said the man, and went back to his nap; and Samuel was led away, and after a pretense at a search was shoved into a cell and heard the iron door clang upon him. He was alone now, and free to sob out his grief. It was the culmination of all the shame and horror that he could ever have imagined; first, to have to beg, and then to be locked up in jail. He knew now what they did with men who were out of work and starving. He lay there weeping, and then suddenly he sat up transfixed. From the cell next to him had come a cry, a horrible blood-curdling screech, more like the scream of a wild cat than any human sound. Samuel listened, his heart pounding. There came the voice of a man from across the corridor--“Shut up, you hag!” And after that bedlam broke loose. The woman--Samuel realized at last that the scream had come from a woman--broke forth into a torrent of yells and curses. Such hideous obscenities, such revolting blasphemies he had never heard in his life before--he had never dreamed that life contained within it the possibility of such depravity. It was like an explosion from some loathsome sewer; and its source was the lips of a woman. For ten minutes or so the tirade continued until it seemed to the boy that every beautiful and sacred thing he had ever heard of in his life had been defiled forever. Then a jailer strolled down the corridor, and with a few vigorous and judicious oaths contrived to quell the uproar. Samuel lay down again; and now he had a chance to make another discovery. He had felt sharp stinging sensations which caused him to scratch himself frantically. Then suddenly he realized that he was lying upon a mattress infested with vermin. The discovery sent him bounding to the middle of the floor. It set him wild with rage. Such a thing had never happened to him in his life before, for his home was a decent and clean one. This was the crowning infamy--that they should have taken him, helpless as he was, and shut him up in a filthy hole to be devoured by bedbugs and lice. In the morning they brought him bread and coffee; and after a couple of hours' more waiting he was taken to court. It was a big bare room with whitewashed walls. There were a few scattered spectators, a couple of policemen and several men writing at tables. Seated within an inclosure were a number of prisoners, dull and listless looking. One by one they stepped up before the railing and faced the judge; there would be a few muttered words and they would move on. Everything went as a matter of routine, which had been going that way for ages. The judge, who was elderly and gray haired, looked like a prosperous business man in a masquerade costume.