In order to make more speed, as I hurried her on before me, she let go the top of her stocking, the weight of what was in it brought it down over her shoe, and out fell two or three slices of meat. The cause of her clumsiness in moving was explained, also of her frequent absences. She had slily slipped away slice after slice, one at a time, and gone into the shed to secrete them in that safe place. Under my eyes, as I stood looking at that meat, she had done it. "Stop! pick up your meat, Bridget!" "It's no matter, ma'am!" Her face was ablaze with disappointment and smothered anger, and tears filled her eyes. "Stop, and pick up that meat!" She did so. "Now look me in the face!" That was a hard command for her to fulfill; but she looked up at me. "Caught in the act of stealing! You do not intend to treat me any better than you do any one else?" "I did not mean it against you,--indeed I didn't!" "Every rule that you disobey is something done against me." "I suppose you will report me; but I was awful hungry." "The rest of the prisoners are awful hungry; you are no worse off than they when you share equally with them; but if you rob them, in order to help yourself to more than they have, you make them worse off." "I did not think of that. I work hard, and I earn a good living, and I mean to get it if I could. It's a shame for me to go hungry when I work so hard." "If you steal food here, Bridget, you steal it from your fellow-prisoners, not from the institution. There is just so much allowed for you all, and the rest won't get any more, in any way, if you take it from them. They must go without if you have it; and they work just as hard as you, and get no more for it." "It makes me awful mad to think I work so hard, and don't get any pay for it." "Then you ought not to come here. You have been here before, and you knew just how it was before you did the wrong which brought you here. You were sent here to work hard, for nothing, for a punishment." "Others do worse than I, and they don't come here. If those that put me here had their dues they'd be here too!" That was the continual rejoinder. "May be; but how are you going to help that? You will have about as much as you can do to attend to your own case. Only think of what you have been doing; robbing another person as badly off as you are. You ought to have pity on each other, if no one else has pity on you! You ought to respect the rights of your fellow-prisoners,--they have done you no harm!" "I will; but I was so hungry and the meat smelt so good; and I did not think of them. If you worked as I do, and was real hungry, and saw the meat, wouldn't you take it?" "I don't know, Bridget; I have not had the temptation." The word temptation sounded out from the other words that I had been using, fearfully loud when I pronounced it. A nice slice of roast beef was a strong temptation to those hungry women. They were allowed enough to tantalize but not to satisfy them.