There are sensitive men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell.  In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul.  The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration—­that which suffocates and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, casting such fitful shadows by the prisoner’s side that he starts from his cot in terror to touch the phantoms lest they be real; the alternate waves of choking heat and harrowing cold; the hammering of the steam-pipes; the curses, the groans, and the eruptive breathing of the sleeping and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear of this so far away; and the despair because they will—­mad visions of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but freedom.  Oh, what a night!  What a night!

There are souls that have existed five, ten years under the courtine of Catharine in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress—­drugged, tortured, at last killed like rats in a hole.  All the while the maledict banner of the Romanoffs writhes above them.  What has been the power to keep alive thousands of prisoners in those bastions, beyond the natural endurance of the flesh?  The glory of principle.

No wonder that a ghastly face and haggard eyes and wavering steps followed the keeper to the American court-room the next morning; for nothing could be tortured into a principle to stimulate Isaac’s courage.  It is easy to die for right, but not for wrong.

There were three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells, through the tombs, into the prisoner’s dock.  Isaac dully remembered the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall.  He thought of pythons.  As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore, and laughed, and shot questions at the keeper as he passed along.

“Have you no friends in the city?” proceeded the judge, after he had examined the witness.

Isaac shook his head disconsolately.  “I have about five dollars; that is all, and my bag—­and, sir, my character.”

“Then I am afraid I shall have to hold you over in default of bail until the trial.”  The judge nodded to the sheriff to bring on the next case.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To the City Jail,” answered the sheriff curtly.  “Come along!” With a mighty effort Isaac wrenched himself loose, and strode to the bar.

“Judge!” he cried.  “Judge, you wouldn’t do that!  Let me go!  I will come back on the trial.  Look at me, Judge!  What have I done?  Why should I be sent to prison?  I am an honest man!”