than seventy-five of the four hundred
prisoners confined here were so employed, and not all of these
regularly--cooking, gardening in season, milling, and general cleaning
being the only avenues of escape from solitude. Even those who so worked
were strictly forbidden to talk, and although they did not have to wear
the objectionable hood when actually employed, they were supposed
to wear it in going to and from their work. Cowperwood saw them
occasionally tramping by his cell door, and it struck him as strange,
uncanny, grim. He wished sincerely at times since old Chapin was so
genial and talkative that he were to be under him permanently; but it
was not to be.

His two weeks soon passed--drearily enough in all conscience but
they passed, interlaced with his few commonplace tasks of bed-making,
floor-sweeping, dressing, eating, undressing, rising at five-thirty, and
retiring at nine, washing his several dishes after each meal, etc. He
thought he would never get used to the food. Breakfast, as has been
said, was at six-thirty, and consisted of coarse black bread made of
bran and some white flour, and served with black coffee. Dinner was at
eleven-thirty, and consisted of bean or vegetable soup, with some coarse
meat in it, and the same bread. Supper was at six, of tea and bread,
very strong tea and the same bread--no butter, no milk, no sugar.
Cowperwood did not smoke, so the small allowance of tobacco which was
permitted was without value to him. Steger called in every day for two
or three weeks, and after the second day, Stephen Wingate, as his new
business associate, was permitted to see him also--once every day, if he
wished, Desmas stated, though the latter felt he was stretching a point
in permitting this so soon. Both of these visits rarely occupied more
than an hour, or an hour and a half, and after that the day was long. He
was taken out on several days on a court order, between nine and five,
to testify in the bankruptcy proceedings against him, which caused the
time in the beginning to pass quickly.

It was curious, once he was in prison, safely shut from the world for
a period of years apparently, how quickly all thought of assisting him
departed from the minds of those who had been most friendly. He was
done, so most of them thought. The only thing they could do now would
be to use their influence to get him out some time; how soon, they could
not guess. Beyond that there was nothing. He would really never