The Inmate of the Dungeon | Page 4

looked at his book and said there was no
mistake; he said he remembered me when I came up and got the
tobacco and he saw me fall into the new line, but he didn't see me get

back in the old line. The warden didn't ask the other men if they saw
me get my tobacco and slip back into the old line. He just ordered me
to fall in. I told him I would die before I would do that. I said I wanted
my just dues and no more, and I asked him to call on the other men in
line to prove that I hadn't been up.
"He said, That's enough of this.' He sent all the other men to the cells,
and left me standing there. Then he told two guards to take me to the
cells. They came and took hold of me, and I threw them off as if they
were babies. Then more guards came up, and one of them hit me over
the head with a club, and I fell. And then, sir"--here the convict's voice
fell to a whisper--"and then he told them to take me to the dungeon."
The sharp, steady glitter of the convict's eyes failed, and he hung his
head and looked despairingly at the floor.
"Go on," said the chairman.
"They took me to the dungeon, sir. Did you ever see the dungeon?"
"Perhaps; but you may tell us about it."
The cold, steady gleam returned to the convict's eyes, as he fixed them
again upon the chairman.
"There are several little rooms in the dungeon. The one they put me in
was about five feet by eight. It has steel walls and ceiling, and a granite
floor. The only light that comes in passes through a slit in the door. The
slit is an inch wide and five inches long. It doesn't give much light
because the door is thick. It's about four inches thick, and is made of
oak and sheet steel bolted through. The slit runs this way"--making a
horizontal motion in the air--"and it is four inches above my eyes when
I stand on tiptoe. And I can't look out at the factory wall forty feet away
unless I hook my fingers in the slit and pull myself up."
He stopped and regarded his hands, the peculiar appearance of which
we all had observed. The ends of the fingers were uncommonly thick;
they were red and swollen, and the knuckles were curiously marked

with deep white scars.
"Well, sir, there wasn't anything at all in the dungeon, but they gave me
a blanket, and they put me on bread and water. That's all they ever give
you in the dimgeon. They bring the bread and water once a day, and
that is at night, because if they come in the daytime it lets in the light.
"The next night after they put me in--it was Sunday night--the warden
came with the guard and asked me if I was all right. I said I was. He
said, 'Will you behave yourself and go to work to-morow?' I said, 'No,
sir; I won't go to work till I get what is due me.' He shrugged his
shoulders, and said, 'Very well: maybe you'll change your mind after
you have been in here a week.'
"They kept me there a week. The next Sunday night the warden came
and said, 'Are you ready to go to work to-morrow,' and I said, 'No; I
will not go to work till I get what is due me.' He called me hard names.
I said it was a man's duty to demand his rights, and that a man who
would stand to be treated like a dog was no man at all."
The chairman interrupted. "Did you not reflect," he asked, "that these
officers would not have stooped to rob you?--that it was through some
mistake they withheld your tobacco, and that in any event you had a
choice of two things to lose--one a plug of tobacco, and the other seven
years of freedom?"
"But they angered me and hurt me, sir, by calling me a thief, and they
threw me in the dungeon like a beast.... I was standing for my rights,
and my rights were my manhood; and that is something a man can
carry sound to the grave, whether he's bond or free, weak or powerful,
rich or poor."
"Well, after you refused to go to work what did the warden do?"
The convict, although tremendous excitement must have surged and
boiled within him, slowly, deliberately, and weakly came to his feet.
He placed his right foot on the chair, and rested his right elbow on the
raised knee. The index finger of his right hand,