"I made a bad beginning, and, from the warder's point of view, I went from bad to worse. I do not know if the man I had injured has been suffered to torture me before my time, or if, where he is, his nature has changed, and he seeks, in the grave, the vengeance he never sought in life. If so, he has his fill of it--he surely has had his fill of it!--already. It was through him that I was there, and now that I was there he made my sojourn in the prison worse than it need have been. Much worse, God knows. "That first visitation of his was followed by others. Twice, thrice, sometimes four times a day, he would come to me when I was in my cell, and speak to me, and compel me to answer him; and my voice would be heard without. It became quite a custom for the warder on duty to stand outside my cell, often in the middle of the night, and pounce on me as soon as Tom had gone. The instant Tom went, the warder would come in. Never once did an officer enter while he was actually with me, but, almost invariably, his departure was the signal for the warder to put in his appearance. I don't know how it was, or why it was, but so it was. I would be accused of carrying on a conversation with myself, reported, and punished. As a matter of fact, I was in continual hot water--because of Tom. Not a single week passed from that in which I entered the prison, to that in which I left it, during which I did not undergo punishment of some sort or the other, because of Tom. As a result, all my marks were bad marks. When I left the gaol, so far from receiving the miserable pittance which good-conduct prisoners are supposed to earn, I was penniless; I had not even the wherewithal with which to buy myself a crust of bread. "A more dreadful form of torture Tom could hardly have invented. A man need not necessarily suffer although he is in gaol. But I suffered. Always I was in the bad books of the officers. They regarded me as an incorrigible bad-conduct man--which, from their point of view, I was. All sorts of ignominy was heaped on me. Every form of punishment I could be made to undergo I had to undergo. I never earned my stripe, nor the right of having a coir mattress with which to cover the bare board on which I was supposed to sleep. I was nearly starved, owing to the perpetually recurring bread and water. And the horrors I endured, the devils which beset me, in that unspeakable dark cell! To me, gaol was a long-drawn-out and ever-increasing agony, from the first moment to the last. "God knows it was!" The speaker paused. He stood, his fists clenched, staring vacantly in front of him, as if he saw there, in a mist, the crowding spectres of the past. There seemed to come a break in his voice as he continued. He spoke with greater hesitation.