It was then mid-afternoon. At half-past five two prisoners were set to arranging a long table by the palings that separated the cells from the guard-room proper. With a trooper at their heels they lugged from the Police kitchen two great pots, one of weak soup, the other containing a liquid that passed for tea. A platter of sliced bread and another of meat scraps completed the meal. Then the rest of us were turned out to eat; sixteen men who had fallen afoul of the law munching and drinking, with furtive glances at each other. And while we ate a trooper made the round of the cells, giving each tumbled heap of quilts a tentative shake, peering into the half-dark corners. That also was part of the routine, perfunctory, as a general thing, but occasionally developing into keen-eyed search. It was the rule to confiscate tobacco or any small articles a prisoner might manage to smuggle in, if he failed of its concealment. But the faint traces of Barreau’s floor-cutting escaped his eye, and the tobacco was in our pockets. The knife and saw Barreau had slipped within his boot-leg. Personal search was the one thing we had to fear. And it passed us by. The guards—four of them during the meal hour—contented themselves with routine inspection, and when the table was swept clean of food we were herded back to our cells. For once I was glad to be locked up; knowing that though dark would bring a trooper past our cell every half hour, to peer in on us through the barred opening, there was little chance of his unlocking the door. We lay on our bunks, silent, smoking a cigarette when the guard was safe in front. The smell of tobacco smoke could not betray our possession of it, for the guardhouse reeked with the troopers’ pipes. We had only to conceal the actual material. Thus eight o’clock came, and brought with it a change of guard. Blackie no longer sat in front with his feet cocked up on a chair, or taking turns with his fellows at peering through cell doors. Nine passed—by the guardhouse clock—and ten dragged by at last. On the stroke of the hour a guard tramped past our cell, on to the others, and back to his seat in front. When he was settled Barreau slid lightly from his bunk. The short pieces of flooring he pried from the hole in the floor. Then he reached a hand to me and shook mine in a grip that almost bruised. “Good-bye, Bob,” he whispered. “I’ll meet you in St. Louis next year, unless my star sets. And I will have a pretty story for your ears, then. Give me an hour, if you can. So-long.” His feet were in the opening as he spoke, and a second later the black square of it was yawning emptily. I put the planks over the hole, and got me back to my bunk. I was glad to see him go, and yet, knowing that he would come back no more save in irons, I missed him. I felt utterly alone and forsaken, lying there simulating sleep—with every nerve in my body on tip-toe.