or scuffing loose-jointedly about the yard, the shops, or the cell-houses, with his cane dangling from the crotch of his elbow, speaking in a low, soft, almost caressing voice, the secret, perhaps, of his power. For his slow and passive demeanor and his slow, soft voice seemed to visiting boards, committees and officials all kindness; and he used it with the convicts, sometimes drawing them close to him, and laying his great hand on their shoulders or their heads, and speaking in a low tone of pained surprise and gentle reproach, just as he was speaking now to a white-haired and aged burglar, wearing the dirty stripes of the fourth grade. "Why, Dan, what’s this I hear? I didn’t think it of you, old chap, no I didn’t. A little of the solitary, eh? What say? All right--if it must be." It took Ball half an hour to doom the men this morning, and even at the last, when Archie went forward, when Ball had glanced at the card whereon McGlynn’s report was written in his illiterate hand, he said: "Ah, the Dutchman! Well, Archie, this is very bad. Down to the fourth grade, bread and water to-day,--and to-morrow back to work, my lad. Mind now!" Archie changed his gray suit for the reddish brown and white stripes, he ate his bread and drank his water, and he went back to the bolt-shop. But he did not work. He would not answer McGlynn when he spoke to him. He set his jaw and was silent. "What, again!" said Ball the next day. "Well, well, well! If you insist; give him the paddle, Jim." When court had adjourned, they took Archie into a small room near by. Across one end of this room was a huge bath-tub of wood; this, and all the utensils of torture, which in a kind of fiendish ingenuity of economy were concentrated in it, were water-worn and white. On the floor at the base of the tub were iron stocks. In these, when he had been stripped naked, perhaps for additional shame, Archie’s ankles were clamped. Then he was forced to bend forward, over the bath-tub, and was held there by guards while Ball stood by smoking. A burly negro, Jim, a convict with privileges--this privilege among others--beat him on the bare skin with a paddle of ashwood that had been soaked in hot water and dipped in white sand. But Archie would not work. The next morning Ball patted him on the head, and said: "My dear boy! You are certainly foolish. He wants the water, Jim."