"No, did he?" I reply, feigning ignorance and yawning. "Well, I hope his ghost won't come around to-night! There isn't room for two in this cell." At which frivolous remark they laugh. But in spite of my answer I do not feel in the least like laughing myself. The thought that I am locked into the very cell which was the scene of the tragedy of that poor human soul, whom a little decent treatment and kindly sympathy might perhaps have saved, only adds fuel to the flame of my wrath. Before proceeding it may be well to give a brief account of my fellow-sufferers, as I became acquainted with them through the night or learned about them afterward. And let me begin by saying that I had fully expected that now at last I was to meet the worst that humanity has to show. While I had come to prison strongly inclined to disbelieve in the existence of a criminal class, as distinct from the rest of mankind, yet I had come with an open mind, ready to receive the facts as I found them, and duly readjust my previous opinions. I was entirely prepared to encounter many depraved and hardened men, but so far I had met none whom I thought hopelessly bad--quite the contrary. I had been put to work with the "toughest bunch of fellows in the prison"; and I had found myself side by side with Harley Stuhlmiller, and Jack Bell, and Blackie Laflam, and Patsy Mooney--the genial "baseball shark," and the "dime-novel Kid," who wanted to give me his grapes; to say nothing of that best of partners--Jack Murphy. But surely in the jail, so I reasoned, I shall meet the "confirmed criminal." In this prison are fourteen hundred convicts--men who, under the law, have been found guilty of robbery, arson, forgery, murder--all kinds of crime; men condemned to live apart from the rest of mankind, to be caged within walls. And now in the jail--in this place of punishment of last resort--here where the refuse of the System is gathered, I must certainly come in contact with the vilest and most hopeless. Men who will submit to no law, no control--men without faith in God or man--men who even in prison will still pursue their violent and evil ways; now I shall get to know what such creatures are like. And this is what I find. Farthest away, at the other end of the row of iron cells, is Number Eight. He is a big, good-natured, husky chap from the enamel-shop; sent down to this place of supreme punishment because he had talked back to one of the citizen instructors. For what reason he is placed in Cell Eight, which has no wooden floor, so that its occupant has to lie on the bare iron plates covered with rivets, I am unable to state. Formerly none of these cells had wooden floors, and everyone slept on the rivets, rolling over and over through the night as each position in turn became unbearable. Cells Seven and Six are empty.