open the broad portal.

She entered with a feeling of dread, as if the atmosphere of the place
chilled and repelled her. It is always thus with persons visiting a jail
for the first time. There is something sinister in the suggestions
conveyed by the long, silent tiers of grated iron doors, something that
strikes terror into the stoutest hearts.

A trusty carried her name to Beard and returned at the end of five
minutes with the information that the prisoner was willing to see her.

As if further to rasp her refined sensibilities and shock her, she was
escorted into a little side room and subjected to a thorough search at
the hands of a stout, impassive matron. To Josephine Burden it seemed an
unnecessary humiliation and she shrank inwardly from contact with those
rough, though nimble hands.

Being unaccustomed to the peculiar etiquette of prisons, she was unable
to appreciate how necessary is the precaution of searching all visitors.
Even with the exercise of the utmost care, it is impossible to prevent
the smuggling of weapons and other contraband to the prisoners.

Nothing to arouse the suspicion of the matron was found on Miss Burden
and she was escorted to the tier on which Beard was confined. As she
passed up the winding iron stairs and down the long corridors, catching
glimpses of human faces peering anxiously through the grating of their
cells, she could not help a feeling of pity for the poor wretches
confined like wild animals in their iron cages.

To the ordinary curiosity seeker the spectacle is one which leaves a
feeling of depression that abides with one like a frightful nightmare
prolonged through the hours of wakefulness. What then must be the
emotions of those, who, visiting the prison for the first time, behold
one who is near and dear to them peering helplessly, with that look of
mute appeal that is ever present in the eyes of unfortunate humans
deprived of liberty, from behind the interposing bars of a gloomy cell?

The first flash which Josephine Burden obtained of the man she had come
to visit, produced a feeling of horror not unmixed with revolt at the
relentless cruelty of the steel bars through which she discerned his
haggard face. Beard's form, dimly outlined against the steel door at the
end of a long corridor, seemed to have gathered to itself the wan light
that filtered through a narrow window at the right of the aisle, and
taken on a gray, misty aspect, wraith-like and terrifying. S