This prison was a small masonry building, fitted with a tiny grating. It was devoid of all appointments, not even a plank bed being provided. To sleep one had to stretch one's self on the floor and secure as much comfort as the cold stone would afford. Bread and water was the diet. All exercise was denied, except possibly for the brief stretch accompanied by the sentry to fetch the mid-day meal of soup, assuming the offence permitted such food in the dietary, from the cook-house. Conversation with a fellow-creature was rigidly _verboten_. It was solitary confinement in its most brutal form. The method of punishment was typically Prussian. If one upset the guard by word or deed, he clapped you in the cell right-away and left you there. Possibly he went off to his superior officer to report your offence. But the probability was that he did not. Indeed it was quite likely that he forgot all about you for a time, because the sentry at the door never raised the slightest interrogation concerning a prisoner within. More than once a prisoner was forgotten in this manner, and accordingly was condemned to the silence, solitude, and dismal gloom of the tiny prison until the guard chanced to recall him to mind. During my period of incarceration at Sennelager the number of civil prisoners brought in to swell our party was somewhat slender. They came in small batches of ten or twelve, but were often fewer in number. They invariably arrived about two o'clock in the morning. Then the sentry would come thumping into the barrack, his heavy boots resounding like horse's hoofs and his rifle clanging madly. Reaching the room he would yell out with all the power of his lungs, thus awaking every one, "Dolmetscher! Dolmetscher!" (Interpreter! Interpreter!) "Get up!" That luckless individual had to bestir himself, tumble into his clothes and hurry to the office to assist the authorities in the official interrogation of the latest arrivals. This was one of the little worries which were sent to try us, but we soon became inured to the rude disturbance of our rest, in which the average sentry took a fiendish delight. By the time the first Sunday came round, and having nothing to do--all labour was suspended, although no religious service was held--I decided to wash my solitary shirt. I purchased a small cake of cheap rough soap from the canteen, got a wooden tub, and stripping myself to the waist, washed out the article in question outside the barrack door to the amusement of my colleagues. While I was busily engaged in this necessary occupation I was attracted by tittering and chattering. Looking up I found I was the object of curiosity among a crowd of civilians dressed in their Sunday best. Together with my fellow-prisoners I hurriedly retired to the sanctuary of our barracks.