“I had visited a large number of prisoners, when the warder of the Penitentiary said to me, just as we reached the door of a cell whose outward appearance was even more gloomy than those we had visited:—
“‘This is the cell of the prisoner I was speaking about—Dick Malden. I have no time to wait at present, but, if you would like to converse with him, I will lock you in the cell, and call for you, say in half an hour.’
“The warden, in his practical way, was accustomed to allude to his prisoners in much the same manner as the keeper of a menagerie would refer to his living specimens of natural history.
“After all, I thought, there was more reason in this than appeared at the first glance; for no doubt many of the human hearts which were caged in those impenetrable walls of iron and stone, throbbed with fiercer passions and more savage instincts than ever inspired the breast of any wild beast of the field.
“I had become so used to the warder’s manner that, before I assented to his proposition, I was on the point of making inquiries regarding the tameness of the animal within; but I checked myself, and merely signified my assent.
“The door was partially opened, and, by a strange sort of turnstile arrangement, I was inducted alone into the cell.
“‘Scientific visitor for No. 46!’ cried the warder in a loud voice from the outside; then the iron door crashed between us; thud went the shooting bolts, and I heard his echoing steps retreating down the vaulted corridor.
“The cell in which I stood was about ten by fifteen, larger than the ordinary dungeon, and was well lighted by a small grating high in the wall opposite the entrance.
“It contained a small iron bedstead, a small iron table, a small iron chair, and a young man seated on a stool, engaged in pegging shoes with such rapidity that it seemed his life must depend upon completing a gigantic taste in an impossibly short space of time.
“But upon my entrance, he threw down his work, and rushed up to me with an eagerly extended hand, and a wild joyous blaze in his eyes (they were very fine eyes—large, gray, lustrous, and expressive), as if I were a brother or a near friend from whom he had long been separated.