There is little to be told of the life in the penitentiary.  It is very uniform.  To eat prison fare without even the decency of a knife or fork—­you might kill a guard or a fellow-rogue with a fork—­to sleep in a narrow, rough cell on a hard bed, to have your cell unlocked and to be marched out under guard in the morning, to go in a row of prisoners to wash your face, to go in a procession to a frugal breakfast served on tin plates in a dining-room mustier than a cellar, to be marched to your work, to be watched by a guard while you work, to know that the guard has a loaded revolver and is ready to draw it on slight provocation, to march to meals under awe of the revolver, to march to bed while the man with the revolver walks behind you, to be locked in and barred in and double-locked in again, to have a piece of candle that will burn two hours, to burn it out and lie down in the darkness—­to go through one such day and know that you have to endure three thousand six hundred and fifty-two days like it—­that is about all.  The life of a blind horse in a treadmill is varied and cheerful in comparison.

Oh! yes, there is Sunday.  I forgot the Sunday.  On Sundays you don’t have to work in the shops.  You have the blessed privilege of sitting alone in your bare cell all the day, except the hour of service.  You can think about the outside world and wish you were out.  You can read, if you can get anything interesting to read.  You can count your term over, think of a broken life, of the friends of other days who feel disgraced at mention of your name, get into the dumps, and cry a little if you feel like it.  Only crying doesn’t seem to do much good.  Such is the blessedness of the holy Sabbath in prison!

But Charlton did not let himself pine for liberty.  He was busy with plans for reconstructing his life.  What he would have had it, it could not be.  You try to build a house, and it is shaken down about your ears by an earthquake.  Your material is, much of it, broken.  You can never make it what you would.  But the brave heart, failing to do what it would, does what it can.  Charlton, who had hated the law as a profession, was now enamored of it.  He thought rightly that there is no calling that offers nobler opportunities to a man who has a moral fiber able to bear the strain.  When he should have finished his term, he would be thirty-one, and would be precluded from marriage by his disgrace.  He could live on a crust, if necessary, and be the champion of the oppressed.  What pleasure he would have in beating Conger some day!  So he arranged to borrow law-books, and faithfully used his two hours of candle in studying.  He calculated that in ten years—­if he should survive ten years of life in a cell—­he could lay a foundation for eminence in legal learning.  Thus he made vinegar-barrels all day, and read Coke on Littleton on Blackstone at night.  His money received from the contractor for over-work, he used to buy law-books.