Never shall I forget the hissing creak of the sliding bar as it closed them in; or the click of the lock as I turned the key in it, for the first time, upon those poor wretches. Long before I got through with the thirty-six locks, it fell to my share to bolt, my fingers were bruised, and my arm ached; but not so much as my heart. I looked in upon the poor things, one by one, as I locked them in. An agony of pity worked itself into my soul, and oppressed me almost to suffocation. I said to myself--Is this a woman's work? May be. If it must be done, it should be done tenderly. Great God, for Christ's sake, pity them in their cold, damp, narrow cells, and make their straw pallets couches of rest! I prayed mentally as I left the grated doors. I had thought this to be missionary ground. I might teach some of them the way to Eternal Life, and the way to reformation. Alas! I found little chance with those who went to the shop and wash-room. They rose at sunrise, and worked till sunset. No one was allowed to hold communication with them, but their own Overseer, about their work. Neither were they allowed to talk in their cells at night, and they would have been too tired if they had been given the liberty to do so. The taskmaster had been over them all day to drive them, pitilessly, to fulfill their sentence of so many months hard labor in the Penitentiary. I turned away, sadly, from that disappointed hope; but I saw the opportunity still before me to teach the nine, whom I had under my immediate care, to govern their tempers, and their passions, and to lead a new life. It was teaching only that could effect it. They were ignorant of the way to do it. My bonnet and shawl had lain all day upon the table that was placed for my use in the kitchen. The woman, who was to wait upon me in my room, had asked if she should take them up. I had said, no, thinking I might find time to go with her; but that opportunity did not offer. After the women were locked up, the Receiving Matron said to her, "Take those things to our room! We will go up now," she said to me. I started back as she led me to the stone stairs of the prison, and began to ascend them. "Where are we going?" I asked in surprise. "Our room is up here," she replied quietly. "In the prison! are we to sleep in the prison?" "Yes." She made no further comment. It was too late in the day to recede or demur. I followed her up, up, up, over five stone flights, along a stone walk to the farther end of the building, through a grated door, into a room made up of a half dozen cells with a dormer window in the roof. Some straw had been thrown down upon the stone floor, and an old woolen carpet laid over it. The walls were of stone like the cells, and whitewashed like them. There were some wooden chairs, an old bureau, two sinks, and two single beds, arranged on opposite sides of the room. In one corner was a double wardrobe, apparently to be shared in common by both Matrons.