got the
devil's own to deal with.

"There was six months I fought: there wasn't a week I wasn't up for
punishment. Do you know what that means? It's better now, they say. Then
it meant the shower-bath till you fainted dead, an' when you came to,
put back to have it ag'in. It meant the leather collar an' jacket, an'
your head wellnigh cut off when, half dead, you had to let it drop a
bit. It meant kicks an' cuffs an' floggin's an' half rations. I was down
to skin an' bone. 'You're goin', sure, Jack,' I said; an' then I said,
'What's the use? Behave yourself an' maybe you'll get pardoned out, or,
better yet, maybe you'll get away.'

"It was tough work. I hated that keeper so't I could have brained him
joyfully any minute. I'd set my teeth when he came near, for the
murder'd run down my arms till my hands twitched an' tingled to get at
him. I swore I'd kill him if I ever got a chance to do it quietly, for
he'd treated us worse than dogs. But I mended my ways. It took a year of
hard work before I could hold on to myself. I'd get a sight at the sky
when we crossed the yard, an' my heart was up in my throat every time.
Oh, to be out! If only I could be on the river ag'in an' smell the salt
an' feel the wind! I've lain on my floor in the cell many a night an'
cried like a baby for only ten minutes' freedom. I'm that way yet:
there's wild blood in me from somewhere, an' I'd make a better Indian
than white man any day."

Jack's restless motions were the best proof of his theory. As his story
began he had sat quietly in the little mission-parlor, but now he was
walking hastily up and down, stopping a moment at some special point,
then starting again--a tall, lean figure, with characteristic New
England face, very thin now, and with a hectic flush on the sunken
cheeks, but shrewd and kindly--the narrow chin and high cheek-bones,
prominent nose and soft thin hair, seeming to belong wholly to the type
of New England villager, and by no possibility to the rough and
desperate native of the Fourth Ward. Born in his own place on some quiet
inland farm, he would have turned peddler, or, nearer the sea, have
chosen that for his vocation; but it was impossible to look upon him as
an ex-convict or to do away with the impression of respectability which
seems part of the New England birthright.

"At last," he went on, "things changed. A new chaplain came, for one
thing, an' I'd got so quiet they changed my cell an' put me on the other
s