that sixteen dollars of his would take wings. Then again, the First
Hall-man could have taken it all away from him by threatening to
dismiss him and fire him back to hard labor in the prison-yard. And
yet again, there were the ten of us who were ordinary hall-men. If we
got an inkling of his wealth, there was a large liability, some quiet
day, of the whole bunch of us getting him into a corner and dragging
him down. Oh, we were wolves, believe me--just like the fellows who do
business in Wall Street.

He had good reason to be afraid of us, and so had I to be afraid of
him. He was a huge, illiterate brute, an ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate,
an "ex-con" who had done five years in Sing Sing, and a general
all-around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap sparrows that
flew into our hall through the open bars. When he made a capture, he
hurried away with it into his cell, where I have seen him crunching
bones and spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw. Oh, no, I never
gave away on him to the other hall-men. This is the first time I have
mentioned his sixteen dollars.

But I grafted on him just the same. He was in love with a woman
prisoner who was confined in the "female department." He could neither
read nor write, and I used to read her letters to him and write his
replies. And I made him pay for it, too. But they were good letters. I
laid myself out on them, put in my best licks, and furthermore, I won
her for him; though I shrewdly guess that she was in love, not with
him, but with the humble scribe. I repeat, those letters were great.

Another one of our grafts was "passing the punk." We were the
celestial messengers, the fire-bringers, in that iron world of bolt
and bar. When the men came in from work at night and were locked in
their cells, they wanted to smoke. Then it was that we restored the
divine spark, running the galleries, from cell to cell, with our
smouldering punks. Those who were wise, or with whom we did business,
had their punks all ready to light. Not every one got divine sparks,
however. The guy who refused to dig up, went sparkless and smokeless
to bed. But what did we care? We had the immortal cinch on him, and if
he got fresh, two or three of us would pitch on him and give him
"what-for."

You see, this was the working-theory of the hall-men. There were
thirteen of us. We had something like half a thousand prisoners in our
hall. We were supposed to do the work, and to keep order. The l