hag!" And after that bedlam broke loose. The woman--Samuel realized at
last that the scream had come from a woman--broke forth into a torrent
of yells and curses. Such hideous obscenities, such revolting
blasphemies he had never heard in his life before--he had never
dreamed that life contained within it the possibility of such
depravity. It was like an explosion from some loathsome sewer; and its
source was the lips of a woman.

For ten minutes or so the tirade continued until it seemed to the boy
that every beautiful and sacred thing he had ever heard of in his life
had been defiled forever. Then a jailer strolled down the corridor,
and with a few vigorous and judicious oaths contrived to quell the
uproar.

Samuel lay down again; and now he had a chance to make another
discovery. He had felt sharp stinging sensations which caused him to
scratch himself frantically. Then suddenly he realized that he was
lying upon a mattress infested with vermin.

The discovery sent him bounding to the middle of the floor. It set him
wild with rage. Such a thing had never happened to him in his life
before, for his home was a decent and clean one. This was the crowning
infamy--that they should have taken him, helpless as he was, and shut
him up in a filthy hole to be devoured by bedbugs and lice.

In the morning they brought him bread and coffee; and after a couple
of hours' more waiting he was taken to court.

It was a big bare room with whitewashed walls. There were a few
scattered spectators, a couple of policemen and several men writing at