The Gold Brick

by Ann S. Stephens

A trap-door, scarcely large enough to admit a healthy man, led to the subterranean dungeons. Around this the prisoners crowded, some swearing fiercely, others laughing in fiendish glee, a few humble and brokenhearted, all hustling each other like wild animals crowded on a precipice. The guards and keepers looked on impatiently. The clank of chains and those haggard prison faces were familiar to them. They were only impatient to urge the crowd down that narrow passage, and seal the unhappy wretches deep in the bowels of the earth, when their duty ceased till morning.

Down through this narrow trap the prisoners forced themselves, cursing as they went, and jesting at their own misery. At last all had disappeared save a little band of women in "linsey-woolsey" dresses cut very scant, who had waited in one corner of the room, under a guard, for their turn to descend. As they passed Katharine, these women lifted their heavy eyes to her face, too miserable for pity or wonder; but her beauty and the strange expression of her features made them pause and look upon her as if they could not believe that she was one of themselves.

Some formalities passed. Katharine's name, age, and sentence were written down in the black records of the prison: "Katharine Allen, aged twenty-two, found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree; sentenced to sit upon a gallows in the public square of New Haven for one hour, and serve eight years at hard labor in the State Prison at Simsbury."

Twice as the warden made this record he stopped to look at the prisoner. Her presence troubled him with vague compassion. He took the irons from her arms himself, and rubbed the chafed wrists gently with his palm, muttering, "Poor wretch, poor wretch. It's hard to put her down among them."

It was not often that this dignitary visited the subterranean prison, but he called the keeper most remarkable for kindliness of heart and bade him take her away. His voice was gentle and Katharine looked at him gratefully, but she was afraid to speak, for while standing near the trap-door she had seen a keeper strike one of the women who presumed to answer him.

A rude ladder, which stood almost perpendicular, led from the trap-door to the dark caverns underneath. At the first glance Katharine drew back sick and appalled by the black gulf into which they were urging her. The warden came forward and strove to reassure her, but she trembled violently and reeled back from the door, holding out her hands with a piteous cry for mercy.

There was no help for it; she must descend like the rest, sleep and suffer like the rest, notwithstanding her beauty and the pure magnetism of her goodness. She clung to the kind hand reached forth by the warden, and shutting her eyes sunk through the trap and placed her trembling feet on the ladder. The keeper was just below encouraging her. The iron lamp which he held only served to make the darkness horrible. The blackness into which she was passing seemed to cover her soul and body.

At last her feet touched the earth. The skeleton ladder seemed melting away in the darkness overhead. The keeper's lamp flickered fitfully; a mouldy scent floated around her. "This," she murmured, "this must, indeed, be the valley and shadow of death."

The man opened a door sunk into the walls of the cavern, and there was a rude cell, occupied by a wooden bench, over which some straw was scattered; a slanting board, also covered with straw, rose a few inches above the level at one end, and this was all the pillow that beautiful head would know for eight years. The keeper carried a coarse gray blanket on his arm, which he laid down on the bench. Katharine took up the blanket, but her hands trembled so violently that she could not unfold it. He saw this; set his lamp on the earth, and spread the blanket over the straw. She tried to thank him, but could not speak.

The lamp light, faint as it was, revealed drops of moisture glistening thickly on the walls around her, and she detected the dull sound of water falling in perpetual rain from the low ceiling. This was the end of her journey; this was her home. The man left her alone; no light, no voice; the dull dropping of water from the roof was all the sound she heard. No wonder that she cried out again, "My God, my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?"