Vague noises are at all times audible in jail--stirrings, foot-falls, a subdued voice now and then, the sharp orders of an official--"bawlings out" as they are termed; the clanging of steel gates, the murmur of machinery, the cacophany of musical instruments during practise hours in the chapel; as well as the periodical screeches and ringings of whistles and gongs. The general impression on ear and eye alike is of stealthy repression, a checked unrest--a multifarious creature, uneasy but kept down. The place is perhaps hardly less silent than a cloister; but the peace of the cloister is utterly absent. An atmosphere of animosity and contention pervades all--a constant apprehension of sinister things liable to happen, a breathless struggle, the sullenness of hate, the whispering of treachery. The eyes of officials peer, watch and threaten; those of the convicts are downcast but privily rebellious, or deprecatingly servile. It is the everlasting pregnancy of war between slave and master, quite different from submission to rightful authority. Whatever the law may say, the rightfulness of prison authority is never admitted by prisoners. Honest authority is tranquil and secure; prison authority goes armed, conscious of its unrighteousness, and there is unremitting nervous stress on both sides. Both sides seem secretly to await a signal to sudden conflict. At dinner, soon after my arrival, amid the omnipresent murmurous palaver of conversation, there fell an unusual noise. The unusual is always formidable in jail. The noise was nothing in itself, and would have passed unheeded in a hotel dining-room. But over us, crowded together there, spread an instant hush. All knew that men had been stabbed, frenzied affrays had broken out in that room. What was it now? The guard in the window stiffened and poised his rifle. The guards on the floor caught their breath, but assumed a confident air. The men sat staring in the direction of the noise, tense and waiting. Nothing happened; somebody had dropped a plate and broken it, perhaps. But had some natural leader of the enslaved leaped up and shouted at that juncture, murder would have followed the next moment. Among every hundred convicts there are eight or ten whom misery and wrong have made reckless, whose morbid rebelliousness needs, to break forth, only the shadow of opportunity to kill before being killed, and they accept it. But it was not to be that day, and we relaxed, and grinned, nervously or grimly, and resumed our meal.