At five o’clock that afternoon there was a great thudding of doors and snapping of keys in Telsbury Prison. The evening meal-hour was over. The last visit had been paid by the chief wardress. Laundries, cook-houses, and workshops had been locked up by the officers responsible, and the five halls, that ran, star-shaped, from the common centre, were deserted except for the wardress on duty at the desk, who was reading the letters which had come addressed to the prisoners and which would be delivered to them in the morning. She worked with the sure eye and hand of an expert, using her blue pencil to cover up such items of general news as convicts are not allowed to receive. So engaged, she heard the burr of a “call,” and, looking round, saw that the red disc had fallen over one of the hundred apertures in the indicator. She put down her pencil, walked along the hall, and, stopping before a cell, inserted her key and pulled the door open. The woman who rose from her bed did not wear the prison livery. Instead, she was dressed in a dark blue costume; her hat and coat lay on the bed and on top a pair of new gloves. In one corner of the cell was a small Gladstone bag and an umbrella. “I am sorry to trouble you, madam,” said the prisoner nervously, “but I wondered if they had forgotten, if----” Her voice shook and she found it difficult to speak. “They haven’t forgotten, Mrs. Pinder,” said the wardress calmly. “The officer should not have put the lock on you.” She pushed the door open wide. “If you feel lonely come out and sit with me.” “Thank you,” said the woman gratefully, and the official saw that she was very near to tears. “Only the governor told me that he had telegraphed to my friends. There has been no reply?” “There wouldn’t be,” said the tactful wardress. “They will be here very soon. Probably they think that you would prefer to wait.” She laughed. “Usually prisoners are discharged in the morning, but the Home Office allowed the governor to use his discretion in letting you out over-night. I don’t think I should worry, Mrs. Pinder.” She waited at the door. “Come out when you want,” she said good-humouredly. “There’s the whole hall to walk in and the lock is on, so you won’t be seen by any of the women.” Mary Pinder came slowly into the wide hall and looked along the familiar vista of small black doors, tier upon tier, at the big window at the end of the hall through which the light of the evening sun was shining. For the first time in twenty years she was free of restraint, could walk without observation, and soon would pass through that steel-barred grille into God’s sweet air and into a world of free people. She checked the sobbing sigh that came, and, her hands tightly clasped together, stood motionless, thinking. She dared not believe the story she had been told; dared not let her mind rest upon what happiness lay beyond the bars.