The prison was a square house, differing from others only in having bars in the windows and standing nakedly to the street without fence or garden. Outside and in it was dirty and slovenly. Adam's cell was in bright contrast, well furnished, clean and neat as its inmate. Adam's skin shone with soap; his shirt was spotless; he sat on a rocking-chair, large-print Bible in hand; and when Durgan came he wept. "There, there," said Durgan, patting him. "Reckon you'd better cheer up. The folks all speak well of you, you big nigger." The jailer stood in the doorway grinning with delight at the novel juxtaposition of a good prisoner and a local hero. "Oh, Adam," went on Durgan, "you look like a man in a tract. I'm proud of you, Adam. How's this for a good Durgan nigger?" he asked, turning to the hard-featured jailer. The excellence of Adam's behavior, which might have been art, had evidently been accepted as artless; for the callous and indolent authorities knew well enough the broad difference between good and bad in the unsophisticated blacks. "Adam--he does you credit, Mr. Durgan, sir," said the jailer. "Reckon Hilyard always had a good word for your pa's niggers, sir. Adam--he's all right. General Durgan Blount said as how you said he was to have his comforts." When Durgan stepped again into the dirty passage way, and recalled the turnkey to open the mulatto's cell, all the easy, brutal injustice of it weighed upon his sense of honor; he felt ashamed for his country. 'Dolphus, backed by no local influence, too weak to wash his cell, was confined amid dirt and vermin. The crusted window-glass let in little light. The wretch sat on the edge of a straw bed, almost his only furniture, his silken hair long and matted, his smart clothes crushed, his linen filthy. Durgan was shocked; in such case it was but evident that his disease, already advanced, would make rapid progress. It was with a new sensation of pity that he took the chair that the jailer thrust in before he withdrew. "Have you no money to get yourself comforts?" Durgan asked. "Yes, sir. Miss--that lady, you know, sir--has given me as much as I can spend on food and drink. I ain't got much appetite, sir." He seemed entirely frank as to Miss Claxton's kindness. "I have come to see if I can do anything for you." "I thought, sir, you was only the friend of your own niggers like Adam." "Whom did your father belong to?" "General Courthope, of Louisiana. No, sir, he isn't dead; but my father ran away when the 'mancipation came, and left the ole Gen'ral, and pulled up in New York; so the fam'ly might as well be dead for all they'll do for me." "Have you no folks?" "Not now, sir. I got called for up North, for something I hadn't done; so I had to lie low, and lost any folks I had. But there's one gen'leman I've written to; he'll play up to get me out of this." A curious look came over the face of the speaker. He chuckled.