I grew more and more angry as chills crept up my limbs, and set my teeth chattering. I raised my thinly clad feet from the cold stones only to set them down in a still colder track—a practical test, it now occurs to me, of the experience of the woman on the stones "in solitary,"—but my determination to ferret out the offenders never faltered.
I was benumbed; but I persevered till I had traversed the five flats, and listened at the door of nearly a hundred cells. The wails had grown to howls, and filled the prison with their noise as the thunder fills the air with its reverberations, but eluded my search.
I gathered my shawl around me, and sat down by the stove to listen; and determine my future course. When I became stationary, the sounds changed their course, and instead of receding approached me. Nearer, and nearer they came. In a moment they were issuing from the floor at my side. I shook with a vague dread. Were those shrieking wails from some prisoner confined in the dungeon vaults below the prison, insane or dying? Involuntarily I looked down. There stood the cat, uttering piteous cries on account of separation from her kittens in the kitchen, and pleading to be let out to them.
Quickly I ran over the stairs to get my keys, nor did I feel the chill of the cold stone walks, as I ran back to appease the distress of the mother cat by opening the way to her little ones.
I did not regret that I lost the opportunity to execute the mentally threatened punishment of my women.
VII.
THE MASTER AND THE RULES.
One morning, as I sat warming my feet by the prison stove, I heard a slow, measured tread on the stone walk, like some one pacing off the length of the building. When it came near to me I looked, to see the Master stalking along in pompous dignity.
There was what he probably supposed to be authority in his bearing.
I arose and stood respectfully before him. I supposed he had commands of some kind, for me, from his appearance.
He went along without changing his gait, or turning his head, into the kitchen.