to every sound of the great building. Through the high dome, off which the corridors run, even a foot-fall echoes with funereal hollowness. In the early part of the night the door-bell rang very frequently, and at every peal my heart rose in my throat. “That must be them,” I kept repeating, but as each time I was doomed to disappointment I began to give way to despair. About midnight I lapsed into a peculiar condition of mind. I was quite awake, but half of the time I thought there was someone in the cell who, although he said no word, yet I knew to be sneering at my mental promises of reform. I had not expressed to him any promise of reform, but I thought he could read what was in my mind, and he thought me a coward. My anger at this would occasionally rouse me out of this hallucination, but again and again I lapsed into it. How I hated this accusing, sneering being whom my distempered fancy had conjured up. Murder was in my heart towards him. I have thought over my experiences of that night until I can go through the whole series of my thoughts as readily as I could through the scenes of some familiar drama. About an hour after daybreak a bell was rung, which was a signal for us to get up and dress and tidy up our cells. A procession of male chambermaids carrying slop-buckets was then started for the yard. This duty being done, we were marched in to breakfast. I was not hungry, but I was weak and trembling in every limb. I knew that this was the effect of want of food, and I determined to eat something whether I felt like it or not. When I found, however, that A POUND OF DRY BREAD and unlimited water and considerable salt was the bill of fare, my revolted appetite refused to be led into such pastures. As before, my rations were eagerly seized by my fellow-prisoners. When Turnkey Allan came in for the working squad after breakfast, he chose me as a member of it. This frightened me almost to death. I had visions of men working on the roads in chains, and I said tremulously that I wasn’t able to work. “Oh, you’ll feel better outside. You won’t have to work very hard.” So out I went wheeling a barrow with a pick and shovel in it. The squad were engaged in taking clay out of a bank on the hill beside the jail, and were wheeling it down to the road. No one who has not undergone captivity, can understand the feelings of a prisoner. It was a lovely summer day this, and as I looked from the brow of the hill up and down the wide-reaching valley of the Don, I could not believe that I could not obey my own inclinations, but was bound to submit my goings and comings to the will of the two turnkeys who were in charge of the squad. I was very weak, and I thought my heart must break. “Here, B⸺,” said one of the turnkeys named Norris, “take hold of this wheelbarrow.”