Fourth: If you have been fortunate enough to earn by a year’s perfect record a good conduct bar upon your sleeve, that bar is taken away, or whatever credits you have gained toward a bar; and you have to begin your struggle all over again. Here also, however odd it may seem to us, the prisoners treasure greatly these evidences of a good record, and resent their loss.
Fifth: Some portion, if not all, of the commutation time which you may have gained by previous good conduct is also forfeited, so that you may have to serve out your full term.
Of course one can easily comprehend how this avalanche of punishments, all for the same offense, no matter how trivial, is admirably calculated to inspire in the prisoner respect for authority, loyalty to the state, and love for its officials. Its admirable reformatory influence must be apparent upon the slightest consideration.
Such were my companions of the dark cells, and such the nature of their offenses and punishments. These were the voices and personalities which came through the bars of my iron cage, reflected from the opposite wall.
It is a very curious experience—getting suddenly upon an intimate footing with a number of people whom you cannot see, acquainted only with their voices. The vaulted room gives each sound with peculiar distinctness, but I cannot tell where any voice comes from; they all sound equally near—equally far off. It is the same strange effect I noticed in my regular cell in the north wing. And as I think of that cell it seems by contrast rather homelike and pleasant, but very far away. I feel as if I had been in this place a large part of my natural life. At any rate I ought to be getting out before very long. And that reminds me——
“Hello, Number Four!” I call out. “Wasn’t there another fellow here, a chap named Lavinsky, who was brought down on Wednesday evening?”
“Sure there was,” answers the voice of Number Four. “They took him away about an hour before you came.”
“What sort of a fellow was he?”
“Oh, he was a bug, all right. Threw his bread out of his cell and his water all over, and hollered a good deal. I guess they knew you was comin’, didn’t they? That’s the reason they took him out. And, say! What do you think they wanted to do with Abey and me?” he continues. “They took us over to the north wing and wanted to put us in a couple of those screen cells. But nix for us! We refused to go into ’em. Said that Superintendent Riley had ordered those cells stopped, and they wasn’t legal. Then Captain Martin sort of laughed and brought us over here. Seems as if they didn’t want you to make our acquaintance, don’t it?”
And it certainly does seem that way.[15]