At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells, and mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the chapel above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and to the left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The men were dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the lofty gratings. From above and below and all around her there came the metallic snapping of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so significant was everything of savage repression and impending violence, that Miss Eunice was compelled to say faintly to herself "I am afraid it will take a little time to get used to all this."
She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to regain a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and belittled, and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other, lost much of its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived her a little, as did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her head, to the tune of "America." The prisoners were singing.
Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were several other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her awaited until the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let loose before presenting them with what they had brought. Their common purpose made them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and sympathy they fortified each other.
Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the chapel to the yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you have seen a burst of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse and tremendous shout at once filled the air, and echoed against the walls like the threat of a volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and spun around like dervishes, some threw somersaults, some folded their arms gravely and marched up and down, some fraternized, some walked away pondering, some took off their tall caps and sat down in the shade, some looked toward the rotunda with expectation, and there were those who looked toward it with contempt.
There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss Eunice descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey shouted to the prisoners over her head that she and others had flowers for them.
No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up pell-mell.
This was a crucial moment.
There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were being punished for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual here had been caged because he was either a highwayman, or a forger, or a burglar, or a ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The unclean and frightful tide bore down upon our terrified missionary, shrieking and whooping. Every prisoner thrust out his hand over the head of the one in front of him, and the foremost plucked at her dress.
She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination impelled her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her distraction enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to smile though she knew her face had grown pale.
She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which projected from a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the hand was pushed away so quickly by those who came after him that Miss Eunice failed to see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough "Thank y', miss!" The spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her disciple thereafter possessed no lack of nerve.