All through the night he walks and he thinks. Is it more frightful because he walks and his footsteps sound hollow over my head, or because he thinks and speaks not his thoughts? But does he think? Why should he think? Do I think? I only hear the footsteps and count them. Four steps and the wall. Four steps and the gate. But beyond? Beyond? Where goes he beyond the gate and the wall? He does not go beyond. His thought breaks there on the iron gate. Perhaps it breaks like a wave of rage, perhaps like a sudden flow of hope, but it always returns to beat the wall like a billow of helplessness and despair. He walks to and fro within the narrow whirlpit of this ever storming and furious thought. Only one thought--constant, fixed, immovable, sinister, without power and without voice. A thought of madness, frenzy, agony and despair, a hell-brewed thought, for it is a natural thought. All things natural are things impossible while there are jails in the world--bread, work, happiness, peace, love. But he thinks not of this. As he walks he thinks of the most superhuman, the most unattainable, the most impossible thing in the world: He thinks of a small brass key that turns just half around and throws open the red iron gate. * * * * * That is all the Walker thinks, as he walks throughout the night. And that is what two hundred minds drowned in the darkness and the silence of the night think, and that is also what I think. Wonderful is the supreme wisdom of the jail that makes all think the same thought. Marvelous is the providence of the law that equalizes all, even in mind and sentiment. Fallen is the last barrier of privilege, the aristocracy of the intellect. The democracy of reason has leveled all the two hundred minds to the common surface of the same thought. I, who have never killed, think like the murderer; I, who have never stolen, reason like the thief; I think, reason, wish, hope, doubt, wait like the hired assassin, the embezzler, the forger, the counterfeiter, the incestuous, the raper, the drunkard, the prostitute, the pimp, I, I who used to think of love and life and flowers and song and beauty and the ideal. A little key, a little key as little as my little finger, a little key of shining brass. All my ideas, my thoughts, my dreams are congealed in a little key of shiny brass. All my brain, all my soul, all the suddenly surging latent powers of my deepest life are in the pocket of a white-haired man dressed in blue. He is great, powerful, formidable, the man with the white hair, for he has in his pocket the mighty talisman which makes one man cry, and one man pray, and one laugh, and one cough, and one walk, and all keep awake and listen and think the same maddening thought.