After the coal job is finished I am for going back at once to the shop, which is close at hand, but Murphy halts me again. "Hold on, Brown, we can't go back just yet." It seems that we must again line up and be counted; then we are escorted by the officer temporarily in charge of us back into the shop, where we are once more counted before we return to our regular places. In order to make up for lost time Murphy and I work steadily on our basket bottoms; he suggesting that we each watch the other's work, to see whether we are keeping the sides even. A mistake is easier to notice across the table than in your own work closer at hand. My fault seems to be to pull the withes too tight, making the sides somewhat concave; while Murphy has just the opposite fault--he makes his sides too convex. So I watch his work and he watches mine, and all things go on very agreeably. At one stage in the morning's proceedings I forget where I am, for the moment, and begin to whistle; but a swift and warning look from Murphy startles me into silence. "Look out," he warns me, "whistling's not allowed. You'll get punished if you ain't careful." "Is a whistling prisoner worse than a whistling girl?" I ask; but I see that my partner is not acquainted with the proverb, so I repeat it to him: "Whistling girls, like crowing hens, Always come to some bad ends." He is much amused at this sentiment, despite its imperfect rhyme, and asks me to repeat it so that he can learn it. As we are working busily away, I perceive a sudden commotion over at the western end of the shop. One of the poor old prisoners, those mournful wrecks of humanity of which our company has its full share, has fainted, and lies cold and white on the stone floor. It is pleasant to see how tenderly those about him go to his help, raise the poor old fellow, seat him in one of the rough chairs--the best the shop affords--and bathe his forehead with cold water. It is also pleasant to hear the words of sympathy which are passed along from one to another. In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful fragment of humanity is placed gently upon it, and is carried out of the shop into which he will probably never return. The look on his face is one not easy to forget, in its white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to typify long years of stolid endurance until the worn-out old frame had simply crumbled under the accumulated load. There may be another lonely deathbed in the hospital to-night. No wife or child, no friend of any sort to smooth the pillow or to close the eyes. Alas, the pity of it! But the sight is evidently no new one to my comrades. A few minutes only and the shadow has passed. There is even apparent an air of anxiety lest we dwell too much on the mournful episode. It will not do to think of death here; anything--anything but that!