I presented myself at that prison where we had the privilege of seeing
the existence to which we had assisted so many of the eighty-six.

"I'm afraid," I said to the guardian of the gate, "that I am rather late
in availing myself--the others, no doubt----?"

"Not at all, sir," he said, smiling. "You're the first, and if you'll
excuse me, I think you'll be the last. Will you wait in here while I
send for the chief warder to take you over?"

He showed me then to what he called the Warder's Library--an iron-barred
room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left school. While
I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison court-yard, there
came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a clatter,
and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner--a young girl of
perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead
against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her
new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her
pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she
seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe
being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt
she would not shrink--only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she
was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at
once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began
to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he
smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses,
and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars, just
staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able to see
right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know that
little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one